Is the U.S. Code copyrighted by the Government? The age of the internet has brought all of human knowledge to our figure tips, this is only possible because of companies finding profitable reasons for storing all of this information for distribution. Could someone make an app containing the entire U.S. Code(word for word) and distribute the app for a profit? Is the United State Code copyrighted?
US Laws are Free of Copyright Federal Works 17 USC 105 says: Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise. The phrase "work of the United States Government" has been interpreted to mean any work created by an officer or employee of the government in the course of his or her official duties. See 17 USC 101 for the official definition. This includes the text of (any and all) legislation. The official texts of all US laws (and federal regulations) are in the public domain, and no one may claim copyright on them. Strictly speaking, this is not a matter of "fair use". Fair use is an exception for limited uses of copyrighted content. The texts of these laws are not protected by copyright at all, and never have been. State Works In addition, while works of the various US states are not automatically in the public domain, the text of state laws, and I believe of the various state and local regulations are also in the public domain. This Wikipedia article says: Federal statutes are in the public domain and no copyright attaches to them. The same is true of court decisions. In State of Georgia vs Public Resource Org, Inc 11th Circuit No. 17-11589, (October 19, 2018) a three-judge panel of the US 11th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote: The general rule that legislative codifications are uncopyrightable derives from an understanding of the nature of law and the basic idea that the People, as the reservoir of all sovereignty, are the source of our law. For purposes of the Copyright Act, this means that the People are the constructive authors of those official legal promulgations of government that represent an exercise of sovereign authority. And because they are the authors, the People are the owners of these works, meaning that the works are intrinsically public domain material and, therefore, uncopyrightable. The Wikipedia article linked above quotes State of Georgia v. Harrison Co, 548 F.Supp 110, 114 (N.D. Ga 1982) as saying: The citizens are the authors of the law, and therefore its owners, regardless of who actually drafts the provisions, because the law derives its authority from the consent of the public, expressed through the democratic process. It also quotes a US copyright office publication as saying: As a matter of longstanding public policy, the U.S. Copyright Office will not register a government edict that has been issued by any state, local, or territorial government, including legislative enactments, judicial decisions, administrative rulings, public ordinances, or similar types of official legal materials. Likewise, the Office will not register a government edict issued by any foreign government or any translation prepared by a government employee acting within the course of his or her official duties. However, some states do attempt to claim copyright in electronic versions of their state codes. The 2015 LA Times story "Georgia claims that publishing its state laws for free online is 'terrorism'" reports on a recent infringement suit by the State of Georgia against Carl Malamud, who makes copies of the Georgia Annotated Code available for free online. The state claimed that the annotations are protected by copyright. In State of Georgia vs Public Resource Org, Inc 11th Circuit No. 17-11589, (October 19, 2018) a three-judge panel of the US 11th Circuit Court of Appeals found this claim to be without merit. After a thorough review of the law, and an examination of the annotations, we conclude that no valid copyright interest can be asserted in any part of the OCGA. ... In most states the “official” code is comprised of statutory text alone, and all agree that a state’s codification cannot be copyrighted because the authorship is ultimately attributable to the People. ... When a legislature enacts a law, or a court writes an opinion rendering an official interpretation of the law in a case or controversy, they are undisputedly speaking on behalf of the People, who are properly regarded as the author of the work. ... Because we conclude that no copyright can be held in the annotations, we have no occasion to address the parties’ other arguments regarding originality and fair use. Non-US Laws UK laws are protected under Crown Copyright, although permissive licenses for reproducing copies are easily available. Many other countries have similar provisions. The US, however, does not generally recognize such copyrights. The position of the US Copyright Office is that: [T]he Office will not register a government edict issued by any foreign government or any translation prepared by a government employee acting within the course of his or her official duties. Laws Incorporating Copyrighted Works by Reference Laws sometimes include by reference privately developed and copyrighted documents. For example, building codes and other safety codes may be developed by private groups, often national non-profit organizations, and incorporated into state laws by reference. This means that the text of the privately developed code is legally part of the law, and the law cannot be fully understood and complied with without reading the code. But the code is a copyrighted work, and the copyright holder may charge for copies. For example, this official Texas web page says: The Texas statutes, administrative rules, and local ordinances occasionally adopt, incorporate, or refer to technical codes published by independent organizations. These codes describe scientific and safety standards for structures and discuss specifications for fire safety, electrical systems, plumbing fixtures, construction practices, and many other topics. ... Codes are not reprinted within the statutes or the local ordinances themselves. They are "adopted by reference" or "incorporated by reference" and are usually available to review at the city clerk's office and at some public libraries. Please contact your local public library or your local government for assistance accessing codes not available online. Federal Copyrights However, this does not mean that anything "published by the US government" is in the public domain or is free of copyright. The Federal government often hires contractors to prepare various works. These works are protected by copyright. Frequently, the contracts will assign this copyright to the Federal government, which as 17 USC 105 says: ... is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise. Such works are therefore copyrighted, and the copyright holder is or may be the US Federal Government. They are protected in the same way and to the same degree as works of private authorship. Many works funded by the US Federal Government fall into this category.
You are creating a derivative work. You are only allowed to do this if the library comes with a license that allows this. If you want to give your derivative work to anyone else, copying it is copyright infringement unless the license allows it. Copying the derivative work and attaching a different license is most likely to be copyright infringement. And if people receive a copy with an open source license that is not justified and rely on it, that’s creating one unholy legal mess for everyone involved and can be massively more expensive than plain copyright infringement. No license means you don’t have permission to do anything with it, not creating derivative work, not distributing it, and certainly not publish it with an open source license.
If I make a working prototype and upload it on youtube will it prevent others from getting a patent on the idea? Generally yes. If the core information is accessible to the public, it becomes &quot;prior art&quot; and cannot be patented anymore by someone else. That includes you. Depending on local legislation, you have a small time window to apply for a patent (after disclosure) but if you don't, it's public domain and everybody is free to use it. If it's mainly code, you may be able to upload to Github and attach a license to it but that offers only limited protection. Globally? That depends on local legislation which there are too many of, to answer this here.
I can see two points you might be confused about in your question. 1. Works can be in the public domain without having a CC license The Wikipedia statement and the government statement are not inconsistent with each other; just because something isn't available under a Creative Commons license doesn't necessarily mean that it is restricted by copyright. In fact, CC licenses are moot for material in the public domain: When a work is in the public domain, it is free for use by anyone for any purpose without restriction under copyright law. Public domain is the purest form of open/free, since no one owns or controls the material in any way. ... Creative Commons licenses do not affect the status of a work that is in the public domain under applicable law, because our licenses only apply to works that are protected by copyright. So if a work is in the public domain, you can use it for whatever purpose you wish (though see below), without restriction or attribution. This is less restrictive than the various Creative Commons licenses, which require various levels of attribution, non-modification, etc. depending on the license chosen by the creator. 2. Trademark protections are separate from copyright protections Your quote from the government website implies that these logos might be trademarked, even if they're not under copyright; this is entirely possible. Roughly speaking, trademark protections keep other people from trading on your good name &amp; reputation; copyright protections keep other people from directly profiting from your creative endeavors. If another party creates a product that uses a trademark in a way that would create confusion among consumers, the trademark holder can sue for that. Depending on how you use the logos, you might run afoul of these protections. See this Q&amp;A for futher details under US law. (Australian law may differ a bit but I would expect that the general principles are the same.)
My remarks pertain only to US Law. Laws vary in other countries. Subject matter eligible for copyright protection in the US must be expressive and creative. To the extent data are merely measurements of observable fact in the world, they are not copyrightable. It may be that the presentation or interpretation of data is eligible for copyright protection (for example, artwork used in charts, graphs, graphics, etc., that is expressive and creative), subject to various equitable use provisions (in particular Fair Use, which is still a legal grey area). The methods by which data are gathered can be considered IP, but is the domain of patents. Methods are not copyrightable (17 USC 102(b)).
If users were to copy dictionary definitions, for instance Oxford or Cambridge) and make the word lists public, is it a copyright infringement? If the dictionary entries are protected by copyright then your user has infringed that copyright by posting the dictionary entries. Am I responsible for this activity? No. But you may be responsible for removing it if you get a request. Can dictionary owners charge me against copyright issue? If you follow the procedures outlines in the DMCA you can be protected from liability.
My understanding is that here "derived from the program" means "created by modifying the source code of the program" and not "created by running the program". Certainly that is the way all users that I have heard of treat the matter. Note that a commercial program, such as a word processor, will be fully protected by copyright, but the maker does not claim to have any rights over documents written using it. "Derived" here seems pretty clearly to mean "derivative work" in the sense in which that term is used in copyright law. In copyright law "derived work" is a term of art with a definition specific to that field.
That a computer language is proprietary does not mean that all code written in that language is copyrighted by the holder of copyright on the language. Anyone may write, and publish, code in a particular language without permission from the language designers, or anyone else, provided that the code is original and is not a close paraphrase of code written by someone else. If the code to be published was created by someone else, permission would be needed unless the code falls under fair use or some other exception to copyright. Permission might or might not have to be paid for.