[Open-access] Copyright for papers published by US or Commonwealth employees

Tue Apr 29 10:44:07 UTC 2014

[posted to Open Definition list as well since they have a lot of
jurisdiction knowledge]

from a correspondent...

"I have noticed on a few ACS journal papers the following text:

Published by American Chemical Society. Copyright © American Chemical
Society. However, no copyright claim is made to original U.S. Government
works, or works produced by employees of any Commonwealth realm Crown
government in the course of their duties.
 example :

http://nature.berkeley.edu/ahg/pubs/Chan_etal_JPCC_2014.pdf

So it sounds like that there exists no copyright, and therefore the ability
to freely distribute the text for papers with this statement. The odd thing
is the inclusion of the Commonwealth in this. Am I interpreting things
correctly?

Does this include any government worker in the list of authors? For example
where you have one government employee and four commercial sector. Are
university employees government, etc?"

PMR: I think this is true for US. I'd welcome the interpretation of
"Commonwealth" - is this British Commonwealth? Commonwealth of Australia?
Canada? or all common wealths? and does it apply to (say) Germany? Max
Planck?

It would be very useful to have a list of territories where this was in
force

P.

-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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