Copyright status of works by the federal government of the United States: Difference between revisions
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===Copyright in government works prior to 1895===
Prior to the Printing Act of 1895, no statute governed copyright of U.S. government works. Court decisions had established that an employee of the Federal Government had no right to claim copyright in a work prepared by him for the Government.<ref name="BergerStudy33"/> Other decisions had held that individuals could not have copyright in books consisting of the text of Federal or State court decisions, statutes, rules of judicial procedures, etc., i.e., governmental edicts and rulings.<ref name="BergerStudy33"/> Copyright was denied on the grounds of public policy: such material as the laws and governmental rules and decisions must be freely available to the public and made known as widely as possible; hence there must be no restriction on the reproduction and dissemination of such documents.<ref name="BergerStudy33"/>
While Copyright was denied in the text of court decisions, material added by a court reporter on his own – such as leadnotes, syllabi, annotations, indexes, etc. – was deemed copyrightable by him, although he was employed by the government to take down and compile the court decisions.<ref name="BergerStudy33"/> These cases may be said to have established the principle that material prepared by a government employee outside of the scope of the public policy rule was copyrightable; and that the employee who prepared such material on his own could secure copyright therein.<ref name="BergerStudy33"/>
There appears to be no court decision before 1895 dealing directly with the question of whether the United States Government might obtain or hold copyright in material not within the public policy rule.<ref name="BergerStudy33"/> But the question did arise with respect to State Governments. In the nineteenth century much of the public printing for the States was done under contract by private publishers. The publisher would not bear the expense of printing and publishing, however, unless he could be given exclusive rights. To enable the State to give exclusive rights to a publisher, a number of States enacted statutes providing that court reporters or other State officials who prepared copyrightable material in their official capacity should secure copyright in trust for or on behalf of the State. Such copyrights for the benefit of the State were sustained by the courts.<ref name="BergerStudy33"/>
Two cases before 1895 may also be noted with regard to the question of the rights of individual authors (or their successors) in material prepared for, or acquired by, the United States Government. In ''Heine v. Appleton'', an artist was held to have no right to secure copyright in drawings prepared by him as a member of Commodore Perry's expedition, since the drawings belonged to the Government.' In ''Folsom v. Marsh'', where a collection of letters and other private writings of George Washington had been published and copyrighted by his successors, the purchase of the manuscripts by the United States Government was held not to affect the copyright. The contention of the defendant that the Government's ownership of the manuscripts made them available for publication by anyone was denied.<ref name="BergerStudy33"/>
===The Printing Law of 1895===
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