Re: Copyright in California Regulations

On Wed, 17 Feb 1999, Jon Binks <jonathan_binks[_at_]harvard.edu> wrote:
>
> Can someone help me here: what would be the actual copyright rationale
> for including state and local government works, such as statutes,
> ordinances and regulations? Why should copyright apply here?

Well, when you try to apply the Copyright Act to the statutes, they do appear to fall within. Then you have the problem that federal stuff is exempted, which in some theories of interpretation would imply that state and local government stuff is covered.

I would think that you might be able to make the argument that the statutes, regulations, etc. might be functional. However, this does not really seem to extend to judicial opinions.

Also, we seem to have all assumed that statutes, rules, etc. were created by (and owned by if copyright applies) by the relevant government. But what happens if the language was drafted by someone else, and then adopted by the government. One place this does happen is with uniform laws. Another potentially is when someone proposes laws or rules and such is adopted without serious modification. Sometimes this happens, esp. in the dead of night when no one can later figure out where it came from.

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The preceding was not a legal opinion, and is not my employer's.
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Bruce E. Hayden                      bhayden[_at_]acm.org
Phoenix, Arizona                     bhayden[_at_]ieee.org
                                     bhayden[_at_]copatlaw.com