Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held that West Publishing Company’s arrangements of judicial decisions in its reporters were original works of authorship entitled to copyright protection.[1] But a decade later, the Second Circuit came to the opposite conclusion when it held that West Publishing could not claim copyright in the arrangement of its reporters because it lacked the creativity necessary for copyright protection.[2]
It seems clear that court records—the oral or written transcript of the trial proceedings—are in the public domain.[3] It appears that briefs submitted by attorneys to federal or state courts also may be freely copied; while no case has squarely decided the issue, at least two courts have indicated that court briefs enter the public domain when they become part of the judicial record.[4] In fact, briefs are commonly copied into microformat, and are digitized and made freely available on many websites.
Statutes and ordinances that emanate from state or local governments are not copyrightable. It is unclear, however, whether a privately published, subject-arranged compilation of state statutes or local ordinances—in other words, a “code”—is in the public domain.[5] Furthermore, it remains an open question whether statutes or administrative codes prepared by private entities (such as a building code) that are subsequently adopted by a state or local government enter the public domain when they are adopted into law.[6]
You may copy sections from a federal, state, or local code. It does not matter if you are a student, a teacher, or an attorney who charges $300 an hour. You also may copy sections from a privately prepared federal, state,
- ↑ West Publ’g Co. v. Mead Data Center, Inc., 799 F.2d 1219 (8th Cir. 1986), cert. denied 479 U.S. 1070 (1987).
- ↑ Matthew Bender & Co., Inc. v. West Publ’g Co., 158 F.3d 674 (2d Cir. 1998).
- ↑ Lipman v. Massachusetts, 475 F.2d 565 (1st Cir. 1973).
- ↑ In a case in which the court was deciding whether audiotapes played in court and introduced into evidence were in the public domain, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia wrote that “until destroyed or placed under seal, tapes played in open court and admitted into evidence—no less than the court reporter’s transcript, the parties’ brief, and the judge’s orders and opinions—remain a part of the public domain.” Cottone v. Reno, 193 F.3d 550, 554 (D.C. Cir. 1999). See also Krynicki v. Falk II, 983 F.2d 74, 77 (7th Cir. 1992).
- ↑ Texas v. West Publ’g Co., 882 F.2d 171 (5th Cir. 1989).
- ↑ In Building Officials & Code Adm’rs, Inc. v. Code Tech, Inc., 628 F.2d 730, 735 (1st Cir. 1980), a federal appeals court was doubtful that a privately prepared model building code would retain its copyright after enactment by a state. More recently, the Fifth Circuit held that after a model building code was adopted into law by two municipalities, the creator could not prevent a non-profit organization from posting the codes on its website. Veeck v. Southern Bldg. Code Cong. Int’l, Inc., 293 F.3d 791, 800 (5th Cir. 2002) (en banc).
