Wikipedia wrote:Munt is based on an earlier MT-32 Emulation Project, which was the source of a short-lived legal squabble over distribution of the original ROM images with Roland Corporation, who manufactured the MT-32 and claims copyright on the ROM's data. It was subsequently proven that Roland Corporation had failed to properly register the MT-32's original ROM code in accordance with the Berne Convention Implementation Act, which came into force on March 1989. As such, the original ROM code of the MT-32 is in the public domain and can be freely used, distributed, and modified without the permission, express or implied, of the Roland Corporation.[citation needed]
There requires some nuance here, because the current Wikipedia text is not quite right. The Berne Convention does not require copyright notice or registration and Japan has been a signatory to Berne since 1899. Once Roland of Japan completed the code and data for the MT-32 in 1987, it was fixed and therefore protected by Japanese copyright.
The Berne Convention came into force in the United States on March 1, 1989, not 1987. When the United States entered into the Berne Convention in 1989, it no longer required notice or registration for copyrighted works in the U.S. or for foreign countries. However, any idea that means that its open season on pre-1989 works which did not comply with the notice and registration requirements is a myth thanks to the 1994 Uruguay Round Agreements Act.
The URAA allows for an owner to restore copyright in its work if the following four conditions are met :
U.S. Copyright Office Circular 38b wrote:1. At the time the work was created, at least one author (or rightholder in the
case of a sound recording) must have been a nati […]
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1. At the time the work was created, at least one author (or rightholder in the
case of a sound recording) must have been a national or domiciliary of an
eligible source country. An eligible source country is a country, other than
the United States, that is a member of the WTO, a member of the Berne
Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, or subject to
a presidential proclamation restoring U.S. copyright protection to works of
that country on the basis of reciprocal treatment of the works of U.S. nationals
or domiciliaries.
2. The work is not in the public domain in the eligible source country through
expiration of the term of protection.
3. The work is in the public domain in the United States because it did not
comply with formalities imposed at any time by U.S. law, lacked subject
matter protection in the United States in the case of sound recordings fixed
before February 15, 1972, or lacked national eligibility in the United States.
4 If published, the work must have been first published in
an eligible country and not published in the United States
during the 30-day period following its first publication in
the eligible country
Roland can easily meet requirements 1 & 2. I can find no notice of copyright affixed to the computer code and data in the MT-32 or its manuals which encompass the copyright of the code and data (as opposed to the text of the manual, so let's assume Roland meets #3. It is #4 where I believe Roland had the difficulty. If Roland released the MT-32 in the U.S. within thirty days of its release in Japan, then it would fail to meet #4. Without meeting all four requirements, Roland cannot restore the copyright to the MT-32 code and data under the URAA.
Note that copyright registration has not been required to secure the protection of copyright, nor will failure to deposit a work with the Library of Congress eliminate copyright protection.
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