Re: swedish copyright law and exceptions

>>> sint[_at_]oeaw.ac.at 12/05/01 08:59AM >>> wrote in part:
However, the question is also whether it becomes public domain in the process. In the USA records of court are public domain. A few years ago the Church of Scientology vs XX charged persons on copyright violation about publishing some of their 'secret' teaching material on the Internet. In the process they presented the published passages. Thus they became legally public (assume that I downloaded and read the queer content, ROTFL). The lawyers of the Scientology sect could have asked to withhold the material from the public but failed to do so. Thus for a while this court records were legally copyable. (The lawyers demanded later non-disclosure). [snip] (I am not a lawyer) <<<<<

While you are correct that as a practical matter, court records are accessible to the public and are routinely copied without permission, nothing in U.S. copyright law places courts records authored by a private party in the public domain. To date, courts have refused to imply an exception for material written by a private party that has been incorporated into a statute; I doubt they would treat court records any more favorably. The use would have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis under the fair use doctrine. [This is a descriptive assessment, not a normative one.]

Tyler T. Ochoa
Associate Professor
Whittier Law School Received on Thu Dec 06 2001 - 19:49:10 GMT