Can OSI specify that public domain is open source?

[John Cowan]

Andy Brooks scripsit:

> Also I have a question as to whether the US Gov would even have
> standing to sue in a European court. There are a lot of countries that
> don't have "work for hire" doctrines and therefore may not recognize
> the US Gov as the true author of the work.

That leads to very very sticky isues in the conflict of laws, a
primitive (my dad wrote an article on it called Marks of Primitivity in
the Conflict of Laws: A Jurisprudential Analysis 26 Rutgers L. Rev. 191
(1972-1973), which is on line but not freely available) and messy part
of the international (and even interstate, in the U.S.) legal system.
My *guess* is that a court would apply the law of the place where the
work was created to determine its owner, but that could be entirely
wrong.

-- 
John Cowan  cowan at ccil.org  http://ccil.org/~cowan
In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side
with the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
        --Gerald Holton