Is a revised version of a PD work with no indication of new authorship or copyright notice protected by copyright in the US?

Question

This is a followup to this comment and the subsequent interchange.

Suppose that a person A publishes a new edition of a work clearly in the Public Domain (PD) such as Conan Doyle's Adventures of Sherlock Holmes or Shakespeare's Hamlet. Suppose further that significant alterations and/or additions have been made to the PD text by A, but there is no copyright notice, and no explicit claim of authorship of those alterations, not in the name of A or,any other name. Is this work effectively protected by copyright?

If another person, B, copies A's revised version and publishes that, Can A successfully sue B? Would the equitable doctrine of "clean hands" prevent such a suit or be raisable as a defense? Could B claim that it is not reasonable to expect B to compare A's version with some other version to detect that changes have been made from teh PD version?

If the revised work includes a statement at the front such as "Includes revisions made 2018" but no statement or claim of authorship and no copyright notice, can A then sue?

Answer 1

Is this work effectively protected by copyright?

Yes.

If another person, B, copies A's revised version and publishes that, Can A successfully sue B?

Yes.

Would the equitable doctrine of "clean hands" prevent such a suit or be raisable as a defense?

No. Copyright is a right granted by statute- it is not an equitable remedy so limitations from equity don’t apply, just as they don’t apply to contract disputes.

Could B claim that it is not reasonable to expect B to compare A's version with some other version to detect that changes have been made from teh PD version?

No. B is obliged to check that they are not breaching copyright before they make a copy.

Answer 2

If the revised work contains no clear indication that it had been revised, then even if the "clean hands" doctrine is held not to apply, B is probably an "innocent infringer" under 17 USC 504 (c)(2), on the grounds that the "infringer was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright". This reduces the floor on statutory damages to $200, but does not change the amount of any actual damages that may have been proved, if the plaintiff elects actual damages.

If it is the case that:

the revised work includes a statement at the front such as "Includes revisions made 2018" but no statement or claim of authorship and no copyright notice

then the reuser has "reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright" and would not qualify as an inncent infringer.

I have not been able to find a reported case with a fact pattern similer to the one in the question.

Answer 3

The clean hands doctrine says that "who comes into equity must come with clean hands", so if the plaintiff has dirty hands, their claim is to be denied. But publishing material that is in the public domain does not dirty one's hands, and copyright law does not impose an obligation to notify potential copiers that you have a legal right to certain aspects of a work made available to the public (the copyright notice is no longer necessary). So I see nothing in A's actions that dirties their hands.

The misuse doctrine is potentially applicable in copyright law. See MGM v. Grokster

Generally, the misuse defense prevents a copyright holder that has misused its copyright from enforcing the copyright in a court of equity. See Lasercomb Am., Inc. v. Reynolds, 911 F.2d 970, 978 (4th Cir. 1990).

However,

The threshold question is what conduct by the copyright holder suffices to trigger the misuse defense... the misuse inquiry focuses on "whether the copyright is being used in a manner violative of the public policy embodied in the grant of a copyright."