Legal Question in Intellectual Property in Illinois

Re: State Owned Copyrights

This is a very interesting question that I have never encountered before. Reviewing the Copyright Act this morning, there is no mention of copyright ownership for states (in this case, Illinois). It merely reads, as you point out, that the U.S. Government cannot copyright material. Copyright law is under exclusive federal jurisdiction. There are no state level copyright laws.

My hunch is that even if states are allowed to copyright materials, the process for using those materials in new creative works is far easier than material which was authored by a non-gov't source. Meaning, you don't have to go through the required clearance/licensing channels that one would be required to do for all other copyrighted material.

The materials I'm assuming your talking about are publications actually produced by the government or some state agency, not say, a state college or university which would definately be able to copyright material.

I know that as far as U.S. Government works are concerned, one is freely able to appropriate material from them so long as the material is given its proper attribution. My guess it that you should at least do the same thing for materials from the State of Illinois. Example: �2004 Jane Brown. Copyright claimed in Chapters 7-10, exclusive of State of Illinois Government statistics.