Is there copyright issue in the following condition?
<p>Organisation A conducts exam every year,question paper goes out with student(There is no copyright claim on paper by A). Company B collects them and publishes them with some charge. Now, if company C tries to provide some content which need question papers to be shown, can C use B's product?</p>

<p>It is quite difficult for C to assemble those papers by self at present moment.</p>

<p>A owns the copyright in the papers notwithstanding the lack of a notice. Copyright exists from the moment of creation of an artistic or literary work.</p>

<p>Both B &amp; C need A's permission to make derivative works (or a fair use defence). In addition, C needs B's permission assuming that the transformation of A's work was substantial enough to create a separable copyright for B.</p>

<p>A lot of this depends on what C actually wants to do.</p>

<p>If C is taking information from the papers that A and B didn't produce and doing something with it, then there's no copyright infringement.  </p>

<p>If C just wants to publish one or two sample papers as examples or something, it's likely to count as fair use, and hence permissible in the US.  Fair use is a somewhat complicated subject, but it's been covered here and elsewhere.</p>

<p>If C wants to publish lots of the papers, that probably isn't fair use, and C would need copyright permission from A and possibly B.</p>

copyright