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

Tue Apr 29 20:53:20 UTC 2014

Hi all,

About some issues raised in this thread.

(1) As far as I gather, « public domain » means exactly « no copyright protection ». This may be the case either because copyright has expired, or because the work was never protected (for instance, if it’s not original enough, or if it was created by a US government employee as part his or her official duties).

(2) A work may be in the public domain in a jurisdiction and not in another. In principle, the works by US government employees are in the public domain in the US only. But it’s quite possible that some government bodies or agencies allow generous uses worldwide. I did a quick check, and I found that some restrict the public domain to the US, and some don’t (or, at least, don’t explicitly mention the US).

For instance, I found recently in a NASA site the following statement: « Photographs are not protected by copyright unless noted » (http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/copyright.html), with no mention of the US whatsoever, which I interpreted as protection not being sought in foreign countries.

(3) The status (public domain or not) of joint works (namely, works where the contributions of the individual authors are not distinguished) by US government employees and others seems to be « unsettled » (see http://www.cendi.gov/publications/04-8copyright.html#toc30). This would mean that no case has ever been brought before a (US) court. This could seem strange, as there are certainly a lot of papers jointly written by US government scientists and others (for instance, university professors or researchers, who are not government employees).

Marc Couture
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