United StatesCopyright Act, Government works, term and State liability, 17 U.S.C. §§ 105, 302 and 511
In force since .
A copyright: the exclusive rights rule binding public and private bodies.
- Instrument type
- an act of a legislature
As of .
What it requires
- Do not assume you need the Government's permission to reproduce a work of the United States Government: copyright protection under title 17 is not available for it (s. 105(a)).
- Get permission from the owner before you reproduce a copyright that the United States Government holds by transfer, whether by assignment, bequest, or otherwise (s. 105(a)).
- Treat the covered author, not the Government, as the owner of the copyright in a literary work produced by a civilian faculty member of a covered institution in the course of employment there for publication by a scholarly press or journal (s. 105(b), (d)).
- Count a work created on or after as protected for the life of the author and 70 years after the author's death, and a joint work not made for hire for the life of the last surviving author and 70 years after that author's death (s. 302(a), (b)).
- Count an anonymous work, a pseudonymous work, or a work made for hire as protected for 95 years from the year of its first publication or 120 years from the year of its creation, whichever expires first (s. 302(c)).
- Do not rely on section 511(a) to sue a State or State instrumentality for infringement: the Supreme Court held that Congress lacked authority to abrogate the States' immunity from copyright infringement suits in the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act (Allen v. Cooper (2020)).
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text, as of . Also read by: Allen v. Cooper, No. 18-877 (U.S. ) (recorded ).
Who enforces it
Settledness
The ruling concerns the abrogation of State sovereign immunity in section 511(a) and does not construe sections 105 or 302. A later suit pleaded an as-applied theory of abrogation, and the Fourth Circuit remanded with directions to dismiss the claims against the State defendants without reaching sovereign immunity.
- As of
- Case link
- https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-877_dc8f.pdf
- Case citation
- Allen v. Cooper, No. 18-877 (U.S. )
What this law does
Section 105(a) of title 17 provides that copyright protection under the title is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the Government may receive and hold copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise. Under section 105(b), the covered author of a covered work owns the copyright to it. A covered author is a civilian member of the faculty of a covered institution.
A covered work is a literary work produced by a covered author in the course of employment at a covered institution for publication by a scholarly press or journal. Under section 302(a), copyright in a work created on or after subsists from its creation and endures for the life of the author and 70 years after the author's death.
Section 302(b) gives a joint work prepared by two or more authors who did not work for hire a term of the life of the last surviving author and 70 years after that author's death. Under section 302(c), an anonymous work, a pseudonymous work, or a work made for hire endures for 95 years from the year of its first publication or 120 years from the year of its creation, whichever expires first.
Section 511(a) provides that a State, a State instrumentality, and a State officer or employee acting in an official capacity are not immune, under the Eleventh Amendment or any other doctrine of sovereign immunity, from suit in Federal court by any person for a violation of the exclusive rights of a copyright owner provided by sections 106 through 122.
In Allen v. Cooper the Supreme Court held that Congress lacked authority to abrogate the States' immunity from copyright infringement suits in the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act of 1990.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app reuses other publishers' content, distributes a software product, trains models, generates content with AI or crawls the web.