Legal Question in Intellectual Property in California

The short answer is no. You copyright the work individually. As long as the reference citations in your book (presumably a textbook or other work of scholarship) are accurate and you are only quoting from short sections of the cited works, that constitutes "fair use" and should not subject you to copyright infringement. Generally, your publishing house will have its in-house counsel vet the citations to see if there are any potential problems.