Can you rewrite someone else’s book, and copyright it?

Q –

I hope you can help me with this question. I’ve been providing (therapy to a) group using a booklet (manual) printed and distributed by (company name removed). The book they have is not copyright protected. After 10 years of providing this program I noticed the material in the booklet is outdated and is not therapeutic towards my clients. Therefore, I made some major changes to the booklet. The original book is 12 lessons. I changed it and (renamed it). This new manual is now 10 lessons. I made sometimes small changes in each lesson and sometimes major changes in each lesson. I felt all the changes were much more therapeutic and helpful to my client population.

Now, I asked (the company) if they wanted to continue to be on the book with current authors and I can simply add myself as an author or if I should remove (the company’s name) all together and just use my name as the author. By the way I’m also going to change the front cover scheme as well.

(The company) responded and said I am not allowed to make any changes to the book nor can I change the name. I believe this is incorrect because there is no copyright. Would I be advised to print my book and get it copyright protected to avoid (the company) from copyright protecting their book and blocking me from making the changes that I have made?

A –

I am not an attorney and this is not legal advice. You should speak to an attorney but he/she will tell you the same thing so let me save you some money and a lot of heartache.

The organization is correct. They own the rights to the book. Just because it doesn’t have the word copyright in it, and even if they never registered the copyright, they still own it.

What you did is copyright infringement. If they sue, you would owe them thousands in penalties and you could be fined up to $250K.

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