presidential duties nor were the interview recordings presidential records, that President Trump was the dominant author of the responsive elements of the interview, and that the state claims were well-pled and not preempted.The Woodward reply focused on certain harmful admissions in earlier Trump court submissions that could spell trouble for the former President’s claims. [The reply brief is available through PACER as Dkt. #75]Even before these motion papers were filed, legal experts found the claims both flawed and intriguing, and we do too.So, question one is whether the “government works” doctrine applies. To answer that, it might be helpful to know what the doctrine is and where it comes from. As found in the Woodward Motion Brief:“[C]opyright protection…is not available for any work of the United States Government,” which is defined as any “work prepared by [1] an officer or employee of the United States Government [2] as part of that person’s official duties.” 17 U.S.C. §§101, 105. “The basic premise of [S]ection 105…[is] that works produced for the U.S. Government by its officers and employees should not be subject to copyright” and fall “in the public domain.” H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476 at 58 (1976); see also Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 140 S. Ct. 1498, 1509-10 (2020). The government works principle is central to our democracy: the work product of government representatives—including the president—is common property that exists to benefit the public, not an opportunity for exclusive, private gain. President Trump’s claims run head-on into this doctrine.[Woodward Motion Brief at 10].While the former President’s lawyers responded by emphasizing that the interviews were not part of government works because they were not part of Mr. Trump’s official duties (or that questions of fact existed that made deciding that question at this stage of the litigation inappropriate), their most pointed assertion might be the contradiction between Woodward’s assertions and his c

Essentially, the watchdog group dared state officials to respond – which they did by suing Public.Resource.org for copyright infringement.It is well-established under 17 U.S.C. § 105 that the US government may not copyright official edicts. However, before Monday’s decision, the Supreme Court had not weighed in on the subject of state governments obtaining such copyrights since a series of cases in the late 1800s.The state’s argument was that the annotated version was not a government edict, but instead was a commentary on the law and, thus, eligible for copyright protection.

Essentially, the watchdog group dared state officials to respond – which they did by suing Public.Resource.org for copyright infringement.It is well-established under 17 U.S.C. § 105 that the US government may not copyright official edicts. However, before Monday’s decision, the Supreme Court had not weighed in on the subject of state governments obtaining such copyrights since a series of cases in the late 1800s.The state’s argument was that the annotated version was not a government edict, but instead was a commentary on the law and, thus, eligible for copyright protection.

If the full extent of the law can be revealed only by paying subscription fees, is it reasonable for the public to be bound by that law? This is the concern raised by open government advocates who support the public’s inherent right to free access to legal texts, and oppose the government’s ability to copyright any portion of these legal texts.The U.S. Copyright Office’s guidelines and practices, as codified in 17 U.S.C. § 105, make clear that official, binding edicts of government are not copyrightable. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court intends to clarify the scope of such government edicts.

Georgia argued that although the statutes themselves were not protected by copyright, the annotations, while “official” and carrying the state’s imprimatur, did not carry the force of law and were, therefore, exempt from precedents dictating that public laws were not copyrightable. Georgia won in the District Court and PRO appealed.While works of the federal government are not protected by copyright under 17 U.S.C. §105, no such statute governs works by state governments. To resolve the question of copyrightability, the Eleventh Circuit looked to the Supreme Court’s opinion in Banks v. Manchester, 128 U.S. 244, 9 S. Ct. 36, 32 L. Ed. 425 (1888), which provided guidance on the common-law restrictions on the copyrightability of law, as well as to the decisions of other Circuit Courts.

It is long established that “ignorance of the law is no excuse,” but what if that ignorance is born out of restricted access to the law? If the full extent of the law can be revealed only by paying subscription fees, is it reasonable for the public to be bound by that law? This is the concern raised by open government advocates who support the public’s inherent right to free access to legal texts, and oppose the government’s ability to copyright any portion of these legal texts.The U.S. Copyright Office’s guidelines and practices, as codified in 17 U.S.C. § 105, make clear that official, binding edicts of government are not copyrightable. Now, the U.S. Supreme Court intends to clarify the scope of such government edicts.

Another licensing issue involves custom code that may be developed wholly or in part by government employees. As codified at 17 USC § 105, copyright protection is not available for any works prepared by an officer or employee of the federal government as part of that person’s official duties, and such works are thus in the public domain, which means it is not possible to license such works under an OSS license. Thus, publishing such custom-developed code may be tantamount to releasing the code to the public under no licensing rights or restrictions.

In 1897, a volume (and then subsequent volumes) of the series was published with a copyright notice claiming ownership not by the U.S. Government, but by congressman Richardson himself!When the opposition protested, Richardson asserted that he was only claiming copyright as to his own editorial contribution to the work. Nevertheless, the Senate Committee on Printing reviewed the matter in 1900 and declared the copyright invalid based on its understanding of the congressional intent of Section 52 — not such an interpretive stretch considering that by most accounts Section 52 was passed specifically to curb congressman Richardson’s literary ambitions.The principal behind Section 52 later migrated to the Copyright Act of 1909 and still survives today in the “Government works” section of the U.S. Code, 17 U.S.C. sec. 105, which provides that “Copyright protection under this title is not available for any work of the United States Government . . .”But it is not clear that the Senate Committee on Printing had the last word. Congressman Richardson appears to have remained defiant, and in fact is still often listed the “author” of the Messages and Papers series, as a quick peek on Amazon.com will confirm.