Commons talk:Licensing/U.S. patents

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[edit] U.S. patents

In order to use the image en:Image:US3386883 - fusor.png in french wiki, I planned to upload it to Wikimedia Commons, but I don't know which licensing option, if any, I should use. I see in the description page :

Are one of:

• "Copyrighted but use of the file for any purpose is allowed"
• or "Original work of US Federal Government - public domain"

a correct licensing option, and are there extra precautions to take while using the image?

Croquant 14:24, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

You should use {{PD-US-patent}}, not {{PD-USGov}}, which would be misleading: a patent is (usually) not a work of the government. There is also a generic {{patent}} template for patens from other countries.

Note: these tags are, like several more license tags, not available in the selector on the upload page. The list would become too long if all possible tags would be shown. If you want to use a tag that is not in the list, simply leave it to "none selected", and add the tag manually to the description text. -- Duesentrieb^(?!) 14:34, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The interpretation as public domain is nonsense. The permission is "the facsimile reproduction by any­one of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records" which clearly refers to a facsimile (ie, unmodified) reproduction of the patent document as a whole. By no means illustrations or text may be taken out of the context and seen as public domain, if they are eligible for copyright. This is clearly stated: "Patent illustrations may be copyrighted". This is a fair use provision for copying the whole parent document (mainly the text, which is often in the public domain because it is ineligible for copyright anyway) even if it contains copyrighted images or copyrighted text (yes, "There are also instances where a portion of the text [...] of a patent may be under copyright"[2]), but it is neither a public domain dedication nor a free license for the picture or the text, as far as they are eligible for coypright. I'd say {{PD-US-patent}} should be gotten rid of entirely since it is a serious misinterpretation that pictures in patent descriptions are released as public domain, which is the opposite of what the referenced source actually says. Many pictures have been uploaded according to this misinterpretation. Exclusively {{PD-ineligible}} and {{PD-old}} should be used. If they don't apply, 37 C.F.R. 1.71 won't help you either. It only guarantees a Nonderivative license on the Patent as a whole. --Rtc 14:39, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

We should accept the pictures under this circumstances. Fanatics like Rtc will eliminate also all Panoramafreiheit pictures from Commons because the shown work is not allowed to be modified. BTW: German Patentschriften are official works (Art. 5 II UrhG) with Veränderungsverbot --Historiograf 18:41, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Please don't misunderstand me! I am not against keeping nonderivative pictures or pictures with nonderivative elements if they are correctly declared so and policies permit this. For these pictures here, I don't see how outside of the whole, unmodified patent they could be kept, since they are clearly protected by copyright, as stated by [3]. Thus, these pictures, if not ineligible or expired, are a copyright violation, as far as I see. A different question would be when keeping nonderivative (the full patents) or partly nonderivative (Panoramafreiheit, Beiwerk) pictures complies to commons policy at all. We can't call exceptions such as Art. 5 II UrhG or 37 C.F.R. 1.71 public domain since they simply are not. They are partial exceptions from copyright and this exception in effect does not produce the freedom of a free license, since nonderivative work is not permitted. If Commons really want to keep such pictures in a reasonable fashion, policies need to be changed to permit nonderivative (and if we are at it, let's also add journalistic) licenses. This would increase honesty significantly and people wouldn't try to twist nonderivative and journalistic license statements with wishful thinking interpretation until it fits the current policy. --Rtc 19:29, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Thus, I propose to change the template. By wishful and uncritical thinking, the referenced laws were twisted entirely contrary to what they actually say – abstruse, isn't it. Pictures eligible for copyright by the usual rules are exactly not permitted to be taken out of context under this permission. Yet, this tag was used to upload exactly such pictures. Delete these pictures.

This U.S. patent contains copyrighted text or pictures. To ensure that reproduction in the context of the patent document as a whole is possible, copyright holders of such works are required to permit "the facsimile reproduction by any­one of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records"(37 C.F.R. 1.71). The works remain copyrighted and may not be taken out of the context of the unmodified patent.[4] By the usual rules for eligibility, text and pictures of patents are often not eligible for copyright. Only if this is the case, they may be taken out of the context and uploaded as {{PD-ineligible}}.

<includeonly>[[Category:US patent with copyrighted parts|{{PAGENAME}}]]</includeonly> <noinclude>[[Category:Image copyright tags|{{PAGENAME}}]]</noinclude> --Rtc 01:23, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Whoa, that new text needs work. "is copyrighted" as a blanket statement is incorrect. The regulation very specifically says that if a copyright claim is made on anything included with the application, that material needs to be identified and disclaimed with the prescribed language. Most US patents contain no such claims or notices. --IMeowbot 14:23, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Interesting. Does a picture loose copyright if published without a copyright claim in a patent? Have the pictures where this tag is used been checked for respective copyright claims? If I understand correctly, the disclaimer does not allow pictures with such claims to be taken out of context as far as I understand, yet the tag seems to be used exactly to justify taking pictures out of context – perhaps with such disclaimers? --Rtc 19:18, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

The situation with patents and copyrights in the US is confusing and has a long history of back-and-forth. I'll try my best to explain briefly :)

The general "public domain" rule comes from the way paenets are published here, as a part of the Federal Register. For utility patents (the ones with all-numeric identifiers, and what are known as "patents" in the rest of the world), this is pretty straightforward: the text and ilustrations are not creative works, they are government forms.

The place where things can get murky is with what are called design patents in the US (those with a 'D' prefix, known as registered designs and not generally called patents outside the US). For many years, it was very simple: there was something called the election doctrine that allowed one to obtain a design patent or a copyright in an ornamental design, but not both.

In recent years, the position has changed, and in the case of design patents, one may also claim copyright in that design.

It is this change in the allowance of copyright protection, combined with the continued publication of registered designs in the Federal Register, that the peculiar identification requirements exist: to identify the privately owned pieces of the larger government work. --IMeowbot 01:33, 23 May 2006 (UTC)