⚖️ Copyright, Public Domain & Provenance

This document clarifies the legal status of the Pāṇinīya-Dhātupāṭha, the copyright classification of historical prints and digital scans, and the standards of scholarly practice (provenance and citation).

---

1. Public Domain Status of the Original Work

The Dhātupāṭha is the ancient grammatical root catalog attributed to Pāṇini (c. 4th–5th century BCE) and forms part of humanity's shared cultural heritage:

• Authorship: Root lists trace back to Pāṇini and the ancient Indian grammatical tradition.
• Historical Prints: Scholarly prints published in Europe and India during the 19th and early 20th centuries have long passed into the public domain.
• Statutory Terms: Under Section 64 UrhG (Germany), Article 9 URG (Switzerland), and Directive 2006/116/EC (European Union), copyright expires 70 years after the death of the author/editor (post mortem auctoris).
• Legal Conclusion: The text is wholly free of copyright (Public Domain). Sanskrit roots, traditional Aupadeśika markers, locative meanings, and grammatical analyses may be freely reproduced, digitized, edited, typeset, and republished for non-commercial and commercial purposes alike.

---

2. Legal Status of Digital Reproductions (2D Scans)

Two-dimensional scans of out-of-copyright book pages do not establish new intellectual property rights:

European and German Law (EU DSM Directive & Section 68 UrhG)

• EU DSM Directive (EU 2019/790), Article 14:

  "Member States shall provide that, when the term of protection of a work of visual art has expired, any material resulting from an act of reproduction of that work is not subject to copyright or related rights [...]"

• German Copyright Act (Section 68 UrhG): Reproductions of public-domain visual works enjoy no protection under neighboring rights (Sections 70, 71, 72, or 73 UrhG).
• Jurisprudence on 2D Scans: Pure two-dimensional faithful scans of book pages lack personal intellectual creation (not a work under Section 2 UrhG) and do not grant photographic neighboring rights (Section 72 UrhG) when applied to public domain originals.

Extracting, modifying, and publishing the textual contents infringes no third-party rights.

---

3. Removal of Library Watermarks & Artifacts

Historical scans frequently carry administrative stamps and shelf marks:

Legal Characterization

These stamps serve organizational tracking for holding libraries. They do not establish copyright in the underlying text.

Philological & Technical Necessity

Automated OCR pipelines mistakenly ingest margins and stamps as body text. Clean removal is mandatory:

• Data Integrity: Avoids corrupting the grammatical canon with modern institutional markings.
• Layout Stability: Prevents grid disruption in the multi-column Typst typesetting pipeline.

---

4. Scholarly Provenance & Citation Standards

While the text is free of copyright, good academic practice requires transparent attribution of sources:

1. Typst Book Edition (Dhatu-patha.typeset_edition.pdf): The colophon details the historical print editions consulted and alignment methods under the Böhtlingk Standard.
2. Master JSON Metadata (dhatupatha_complete.json): Every root entry records the historical print page via the orig_page attribute ([p. 26]).

---

5. Licensing of the Edition

• Historical Textual Data: Public Domain.
• Pipeline Code & Typst Templates: Released under the MIT License.