Public Domain and liability

[Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M.]

Good point, John. I was thinking more in terms of works being "released to
the public domain" by expiration of copyright or some other operation of
law. You are exactly correct. The federal government cannot claim copyright
to its own works so those works are public domain works at their inception
under copyright law (one caution: a patent may be obtained).

As a practical matter and aside from military or national security uses, the
Federal government acts as a market player (rather than a software
developer) so the vast majority of software programs used by or created for
the Federal government are works licensed to the government from private
sector sources and university research. Of course, these works usually do
not by operation of law immediately become public domain works.

Rod

> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Cowan [mailto:cowan at locke.ccil.org]
> Sent: Monday, August 07, 2000 7:58 PM
> To: Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M.
> Cc: bcretney at postmark.net; License Discuss
> Subject: RE: Public Domain and liability
>
>
> On Mon, 7 Aug 2000, Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M. wrote:
>
> > Strictly speaking, this discussion is theoretical since I know
> of no public
> > domain works that are software programs. (This is not to say
> that  there is
> > not any source code in the public domain).
>
> Software programs written by U.S. government employees
> within the scope of their employment are surely in the public domain.
> For example, see the software programs linked to
> http://mapping.usgs.gov/www/products/software.html .
> As a specific example,
> http://geochange.er.usgs.gov/pub/tools/misc/reform.c
> is the source code for a public-domain program (though not explicitly
> dedicated to the public domain within the code itself).
>
> --
> John Cowan                                   cowan at ccil.org
> C'est la` pourtant que se livre le sens du dire, de ce que, s'y conjuguant
> le nyania qui bruit des sexes en compagnie, il supplee a ce qu'entre eux,
> de rapport nyait pas.               -- Jacques Lacan, "L'Etourdit"
>
>
>