Are environmental impact statements subject to copyright?

[Mdcastle]

For instance the 1995 Stillwater Bridge EIS has the Federal Highway Administration as well as Mn/DOT on it. Mn/DOT asserts their copyright on their materials, but a work of the federal government cannot be copywrited, so I was wondering which applied.
http://www.dot.state.mn.us/metro/projects/stcroix/pdfs/1995_FEIS.pdf

Even if the text is not, is it possible the bridge renderings are subject to copyright?

[3467]

I checked with my wife who copies stuff for a living......and maybe. Materials outsourced by the feds can be she says it may be Also MN Dot probably paid for it so it has a good case . You might need a lawyer or even a court case But Minn has a very good case
Even if they don't claim copyright you still have one on your work. Most states don't claim it.It may very well be that Minn paying for Bridge designs wants to protect those designs.

I would suggest getting permission if you want to do something with those designs just to be safe

[oscar]

Just because something is copyrighted doesn't necessarily mean you can't copy it, especially for a document prepared by a state agency which it posts on the Internet.  Federal copyright law includes "fair use" and other defenses which allow some use of copyrighted material by persons other than the copyright holder, even where the holder is a private company.

It may hang on what you want to do with the document.  For example, since the point of publicly releasing an EIS is to facilitate public discussion of a proposed project, it would undermine that purpose if a state DOT were to use copyright to squelch discussion, or in particular to block a project opponent from running off copies at a place like FedEx Kinko's so it can spread the word on what it thinks the DOT is doing wrong.  But if you want to make commercial use of something in the document, such as sell T-shirts showing the bridge design, that might be another story.

[Duke87]

The renderings certainly could be copyrighted depending on who made them and under what circumstances. If they were created by an independent firm I imagine said firm might wish to assert intellectual property rights over those images.

[3467]

I thought about that too Duke 87. But those may belong to the state because the state paid the contractors But there are rules where those revert back to the artist at some point
I winder if this is a reason MN wants copyright I agree with Oscar too. I don't think the purpose is to suppress anything but EIS often contain original research and design especially bridge designs or commercial value and I see nothing wrong with MN protecting the taxpayer investment in it

[jeffandnicole]

The renderings certainly could be copyrighted depending on who made them and under what circumstances. If they were created by an independent firm I imagine said firm might wish to assert intellectual property rights over those images.

If the renderings are made for potential proposals of a bridge for a public agency, which then by law must hold public hearings on a public project, then the renderings couldn't be copyrighted because the intent is to make them public.

[NE2]

If the renderings are made for potential proposals of a bridge for a public agency, which then by law must hold public hearings on a public project, then the renderings couldn't be copyrighted because the intent is to make them public.

Utterly wrong in most states. They may be legal to copy for the purpose of getting out info about the project, yet illegal to sell copies of.

[oscar]

I thought about that too Duke 87. But those may belong to the state because the state paid the contractors But there are rules where those revert back to the artist at some point
I winder if this is a reason MN wants copyright.

Does either Minnesota DOT, or EIS co-author Wisconsin DOT, want or assert copyright in this instance?  My quick flop-through of a very long and tedious document didn't pick up any copyright notices in places you'd expect to find them, or bridge drawings with either their own notices or other evidence that their creators might care about copyright.  While such notices aren't necessary to claim copyright, if there are none that suggests copyright might be a purely hypothetical issue here (even leaving aside "fair use" and other legal permissions to use copyrighted material). 

In any case, parts of the report (including at least the letters and other documents prepared by Federal agencies) are clearly un-copyrightable.  FHWA's co-authorship of the overall report, ISTM, at least really complicates whether any of the report is copyrightable (except perhaps any parts of the report clearly not prepared or co-authored by FHWA). 

[Mdcastle]

There's nothing on the documents themselves that indicate they're copyrighted. The Mn/DOT web site itself seems to claim copyright.
http://www.dot.state.mn.us/information/disclaimer.html
But right after that makes a statement about granting "permission to copy" so I don't know what they're trying to get at.
The specific drawing I was going to use for a blog article was a rendering of the 1995 proposal. Presumably this has no commercial value since it will never be built, but I was looking for a more general opinion to for future articles.

WisDOT seems to want you to formally ask them before copying their content.
http://www.dot.state.wi.us/util/acceptable.htm

[Scott5114]

If you are going to use an excerpt for a blog article discussing the project, that is a pretty clear case of fair use (I'm no lawyer, but I think Oscar is so he is the guy you want to listen to). In any event I would imagine your blog is small enough that Mn/DOT won't ever even know it's out there.