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

Tue Apr 29 11:10:50 UTC 2014

Tom,
see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_status_of_work_by_the_U.S._governmentwhich
states that works by US employees are not projectable *in the US*. I
am not sure it's synonymous with "public domain". It's certainly free to
re-use in US.

As always its a complex area and governed by multiple laws in multiple
jurisdictions. In practice I would guess that it would be reasonable to
assume such works were re-usable anywhere, though not necessarily for any
purpose.

On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 12:00 PM, Tom Olijhoek <tom.olijhoek at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi Peter,
>
> Interesting finding.
> However if there is no claim for copyright by the society there could be a
> copyright for the government agency , is it not?
> And then it would not automatically mean that the work is free to
> distribute or reuse.
> But I am no copyright law specialist and people from Creative commons
> might know more about this
>
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 12:44 PM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk>wrote:
>
>> [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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>>
>
>
> --
> Tom Olijhoek
> Codex Consult
> www.codexconsult.eu
> coordinator @ccess open access working group  at OKF
> DOAJ  member of Advisory Board
> freelance advisor for the WorldBank Publishing Group
> TEL +(31)645540804
> SKYPE tom.olijhoek
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>
>

-- 
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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