U.S. Government IP and Federal Institutional Repositories

["Klein, Bonnie" <BKlein@xxxxxxxx>]

Comments on digital-copyright Digest 26 Jun 2003 15:00:01 -0000 Issue 208
480 by: Paul Uhlir
482 by: Edward Barrow
481 by: Gerry Mckiernan

1)  Regarding Paul Uhlir's statement:  "In the U.S., the federal government
does not allow copyright protection (or any other IP protection) of any
works produced by it.."

Federal attorney members of the CENDI Copyright Task Group
http://www.dtic.mil/cendi/proj_copyright_int_prop.html would like to clarify
that:

In the U.S., the Copyright Act of 1976 does not generally allow copyright
protection for U.S. Government works, i.e., works produced by its employees
as part of their official duties, pursuant to the prohibition of 17 U.S.C.
Sec. 105.  Exceptions to this prohibition include standardized reference
data (15 U.S.C. Sec. 290) and certain Postal Service works (39 U.S.C.
Sec.405).  The federal government may also hold copyrights assigned to it
(e.g., by government contractors producing works for the government).
Additionally, in accordance with the copyright laws of a foreign country,
the federal government may hold foreign copyrights on U.S. Government works.
Regarding other forms of intellectual property, the U.S. Government owns
both patents and trademarks on employee-created inventions and marks.

2)  Regarding Gerry McKiernan's posting, I would like to point out that
Government scientific, technical, and medical (STM) agencies have a long
history of maintaining "institutional repositories" and in making these
collections available to the public. See http://www.science.gov/about.html
for a list of some of the agencies.

As an example, for over 50 years, the Defense Technical Information Center
(www.dtic.mil) has served as the Department of Defense (DOD) central
repository and secondary disseminator of DOD conducted or funded scientific
and technical information. DTIC developed the infrastructure in 1995 to
allow the public to search citations through our Scientific and Technical
Information Network (STINET).  In early 1998 DTIC added full-text display
and today offers free online access to over 112,000 public release documents
(CAUTION -- Not all DTIC public release documents are public domain).  In a
2002 enhancement, DTIC assigned Handles or permanent identifiers/names to
these documents.  Users referencing DTIC handles will get no more 404
messages. http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/handles/index.html.  Again, on an order
of magnitude, DTIC is only one of many federal agencies that provide public
access to federally funded information.

Bonnie Klein
Program Manager for Copyrighted Information &
   Chair, CENDI Copyright Task Group
Defense Technical Information Center
Ft. Belvoir, VA
bklein@xxxxxxxx