Re: broadcast speech

On 04/22/98, Michael Seadle <seadle[_at_]mainlib3.lib.msu.edu> wrote:
>
> 1) Are the speeches of federal officials speaking on work related
> matters copyright protected, or are they unprotected in the same way
> that federal documents are? ...I'm guessing the latter, but I find no
> authority for my guess.

Speeches do not fall within the federal Copyright Act unless and until they are "fixed," i.e., written down or recorded in some permanent form. As soon as they are fixed (with the permission of the author), they are subject to the Act. Section 105 provides that "Copyright protection... is not available for any work of the United States Government," and that term is defined as "a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person's official duties." So, as long as speaking on work-related matters is part of that person's official duties, there can be no copyright in the speech.

> 2) Does a broadcaster have an intellectual property interest in the
> spoken words themselves, as opposed to the images and commentary? ...My
> thought is that, since the broadcast adds nothing unique to the words
> themselves, it has no IP rights.

That's correct, but the standard is originality, not unique-ness. The broadcaster gets a copyright only in its original expression, and the words spoken by the federal official are not "original" to the broadcaster.

Tyler T. Ochoa
Associate Professor
Whittier Law School
tochoa[_at_]law.whittier.edu Received on Thu Apr 23 1998 - 17:41:44 GMT