Editing The Urantia Book (section)

=== Copyright status ===
In 1991, after having compiled an index of ''The Urantia Book'' and distributed free copies via computer disk and printouts, Kristen Maaherra was sued by the Urantia Foundation for violating their copyright on the book.{{sfn|Gardner|1995|p=398}} In 1995, Maaherra won a summary judgment declaring the Urantia Foundation's copyright renewal invalid.{{sfn|Gardner|1995|p=408}} Upon appeal, the judgment was reversed and awarded to the Urantia Foundation.<ref name="Maaherra1997" />{{sfn|Cotter|2003|pp=354–355}}

Four years later, in 1999, Harry McMullan III and the Michael Foundation published a book, ''Jesus–A New Revelation'', which included verbatim 76 of the 196 papers included in ''The Urantia Book''.  McMullan and the Michael Foundation subsequently sought a legal declaration that the Urantia Foundation's US copyright in ''The Urantia Book'' was either invalid or, alternatively, that the copyright had not been infringed upon.  Urantia Foundation's copyright was held to have expired in 1983 because the book was deemed to have been neither a composite work nor a commissioned work for hire.  These two arguments having been rejected, a U.S. court held that, since the "sleeping subject" (whom the court referred to as "the Conduit") had died prior to 1983, only the Conduit's heirs would have been eligible to renew the copyright in 1983 and, since they had not done so, the Urantia Foundation's copyright on the book had expired and the book had therefore passed into the public domain.  This decision was upheld on appeal.<ref name="Michael2003" />  The Urantia Foundation accepted that as of 2006, the international copyright on the English text expired.<ref name="UrantiaFoundCopyright" />