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[inventorgadget]

In the 1960's there was a newsletter that was around for several years.
It published multiple parts of a course that someone was teaching. Not only
did the article in that day not have any copyright attached, the newletter
even published articles bashing copyrights as being for people with no
creativity to come up with anything new. During that time, a copyright
was required in order to actually copyright the course material that was
published in the newsletter.

25-30 years later, the author of that course tried to copyright it in the early
80's I believe. On the original copyright application, you can see where the author
of that course initially indicated that the course was put out on some audio
tapes for training but neglected to mention the newsletter publications that
bragged about it's content not being copyrighted.

You can also see original XXX's over his response and notes that an examiner
at the copyright office recommended that it is not able to be copyrighted with
the current answer that it was previously published (in audio tapes). The XXX's
do not block the original answers or the examiner's notes - it is clear as day.

Essentially, the copyright examiner told the man that he cannot copyright it
unless he changed his answer so it indicated that it was never published before.
In essence, the copyright examiner recommended that he lied in order to get
it copyrighted - ALL THERE ON THE APPLICATION.

From my novice research, this is Fraud on the Copyright Office.

I sold this course before because it was not copyrighted and the newsletter that
it was published in even bragged about this fact - they were proud of it.

So a couple years ago, the author died and one of his ex-wives had her
attorney send a DMCA digital millennium copyright act notice to make me stop
since that copyright is in effect registered - although a fraud - it is still in good
standing until it is revoked to my understanding so I stopped selling the course.

What is the process to have a copyright that is this blatantly fraudulent overturned
at the copyright office? And can I do this without an attorney?

I have copies of the original newsletter, there is no copyright on the course material,
I have the article in the newsletter bragging about no copyright, I have a copy of
the copyright application that the attorney sent me - what can I do to have it
overturned?

[mactheknife]

(1) As far as I know, there is no formal administrative "reexamination" procedure or anything like that that allows you to challenge the copyright registration at the Copyright Office level.  You would actually have to sue in federal court for cancellation (and probably a judgment that either the newsletter is in the public domain or what you are doing is not an infringement).

(2) The DMCA notice doesn't make sense.  A DMCA notice is sent to a third-party like an ISP that stores whatever allegedly infringing material there is; the ISP has to take down the material.  You, however, can send a counter-notice back to the ISP, and the ISP legally has to restore access to the material until you and the original sender of the DMCA notice duke it out in court.  The fact that you haven't mentioned an ISP makes me think that this isn't a DMCA notice.

(3) It also seems strange that "one of his ex-wives" was able to send the notice.  Basically, you have to be a copyright owner to have standing to send one of those, or to sue.  Ex-wives don't normally get their ex-husband's copyrights unless they were willed to her (I assume you mean that she was divorced from him before he died).

So in sum -- if the facts are as you state them, it's possible to perhaps establish your right to sell the course, but it likely will involve contentious litigation and it's not something that I would recommend doing without an attorney who knows what they're doing in the copyright world (i.e., not the 1-800 personal injury lawyer you saw on tv at 3 a.m.).

[inventorgadget]

The DCMA was sent to my ISP and the ISP automatically disabled my entire account without waiting for a response from me.

We sent a rebuttal back to them on the issue but it didn't do anything.

His ex-wife was left with the copyright after the death. It is possible they were married when he died so not an ex-wife.
There were a few of them too, but it was the last that had rights to it.

IF, it requires a a judge to rule on it, then it probably isn't worth going to court over even if I won.