Re: Copyright of Government Sponsored Work

On Sat, 28 Aug 1999, Stephen Fishman <sfish55[_at_]yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> On Fri, 27 Aug 1999, Jerald Gnuschke <jerald.gnuschke[_at_]nokia.com> wrote:
> >
> > Under national treatment, foreign national governments are
> > entitled to no more copyright protection than the US government.
> > Therefore, unless there is an exception written into the US
> > copyright law, foreign NATIONAL governments have no more copyright
> > than the US government. I have not found such an exception written
> > into the Copyright Act. It may exist, but my brief review has not
> > located it. If anyone on the list sees a flaw in this reasoning,
> > please point it out because I too would like to know the answer
> > to Mr. Groves' question.
>
> Take a look at Section 104(b)(1) of the Copyright Act. It says that
> a work by an author that is "a national, domiciliary, or sovereign
> authority of a foreign nation that is a party to a copyright treaty
> to which the U.S. is also a party" is entitled to U.S. copyright
> protection.
>
> "Sovereign authority of a foreign nation" means foreign governments.
> Therefore, foreign governments are entitled to U.S. copyroght
> protection for their works. Many, but not all, foreign countries
> claim such copyright protection. For example, Great Britain and
> Canada have something called Crown Copyright.

Yep. You're right. Looks like I'm wrong on this one. Foreign governments are explicitly written into the US Copyright Act. I also checked Thomas for the congressional history and came up with the following in the Notes on Title 17, Section 105:

   "The prohibition on copyright protection for United States    Government works is not intended to have any effect on protection    of these works abroad. Works of the governments of most other    countries are copyrighted. There are no valid policy reasons for    denying such protection to United States Government works in    foreign countries, or for precluding the Government from making    licenses for the use of its works abroad."

Note that in addition to supporting the sovereign authority definition you stated above, the quoted paragraph also supports the point that James Brennan made earlier about copyright protection of US govt works in foreign countries.

Jerald Gnuschke
<jerald.gnuschke[_at_]nokia.com> Received on Mon Aug 30 1999 - 23:01:28 GMT