U.S. Government works are automatically in the public domain.

However, under some circumstance, what might appear to be a public domain government work may not be. Examples include:

• Published works honored by Congress by being read into the Congressional Record are still copyrighted.

• An author may assign their copyright to the U.S. government, in which case the government does become the copyright owner.

• Copyright material appearing on U.S. government websites without permission of the copyright owners is still copyrighted. Such use would be an infringement of copyright.