This page provides information on the interaction between federal copyright law and the Data Practices Act. It also summarizes relevant advisory opinions by the Minnesota Attorney General and Commissioner of Administration.
Copyright law in Title 17 of the United States Code says that a copyright exists "in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression… from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device." Works include:
There are several categories of items that are not eligible for copyright protection:
Copyright is a unique concept of law because an author does not have to fill out a form or an application to get copyright protection—the protection automatically attaches as soon as the work is created. Once an author creates an “original work,” the author is granted exclusive rights to:
Because these rights are given to an author immediately, a work is still covered by copyright protection even if it does not have the © symbol.
Federal copyright law prohibits the reproduction or distribution of copyrighted documents by anyone other than the copyright owner. In contrast, the Data Practices Act mandates that all data “collected, created, received, maintained or disseminated” by a government entity shall be available to the public to inspect or copy, unless there is a specific provision classifying the data as not public.
To reconcile these two laws, the government entity needs to determine if the copyrighted work is owned by the government entity or if the entity is just the holder of the copyrighted work.
There will be some instances when a government entity creates a document and wants to enforce its copyright. While federal agencies are not allowed to copyright documents, this does not apply to state or local government entities.
In some situations, a government entity receives a work that is copyrighted by a third-party. When a government entity is in possession of a copyrighted document, it must protect the work’s copyright, especially in relation to the Data Practices Act.
