Right after the new rewritten copyright law was brought into use I was sent to a copyright school. This presentation was given by a copyright attorney who was involved with the rewriting. At the time I was staff artist / photographer for the City of Charlotte, NC Engineering Department. After several years the item falls out of copyright. HOWEVER it can be re-copyrighted. My reason for the school? The City Engineer wanted to copyright the city maps. WRONG! base material can not be copyrighted. When you see a copyright on a map, that means: indexing system, design, etc. is copyrighted, but the base material can not be copyrighted. All U.S. government documents payed for with tax payer funds are in public domain. BUT! watch your step, the government sometimes includes copyrighted material in their documents. They most likely paid the copyright holder for the use, BUT that part of the document still belongs to the original copyright holder.
Pop