I must have a completely wrongheaded understanding of the principles & logic underlying copyright law. Whoever Smith's beneficiaries may be, I simply don't see how they can make financial demands on those who use his words. Are there any other works as old as WN that have copyright protection? I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that OUP hasn't been been confronted by a legal challenge when they ask an author to cough up a fee, because unless I am mistaken, no nation allows a work to be covered by copyright protection for 230 years (much as the Disney Corporation and the publishers of Superman comic books wish that weren't the case). I wonder whether OUP ever tried to extract the fee after the fact, i.e. after the Glasqow edition has been quoted: barring the case of photoreproduction, under what legal principle could they possibly expect to win? Michael's remarks are well taken, but I interpret them to mean that the deeper one's pockets the greater one's ability to get away with ludicrous demands. I'm pretty sure Smith himself would find OUP's behavior scandalous, not to say an affront to everything he stood for.
 
I'd still like to hear what a lawyer thinks.
 
Gary Mongiovi