I did not know that authors who are not with the government had tried to put works in the public domain, that are submitted to IEEE. I didn't know this was possible.
I know it certainly is standard policy for government researchers and labs to retain copyright when work is submitted to IEEE (or anywhere).
Sometimes publishers say tough words about how this isn't possible, and you have to sign their copyright form, and you're holding up publication of the work. It's BS. The government copyright people will talk sense into them, and retain copyright so that the work can be distributed openly.
Federally commissioned works do not 'retain copyright'. They don't have copyright _at all_ (by law). As such, there is no legal basis for restricting copying of such works. Of course, this includes the IEEE - they can republish all they want, they just can't stop anyone else from republishing, because the copyright never existed in the first place.
I produce work as part of an FFRDC. The lawyer-derived boilerplate I must put on my work says (in part) "Copyright 2011".
But, it's OK to republish the work in any way, including as part of a public web site or government report.
I interpreted this as meaning that the government retains copyright, but that may be the wrong legal phrasing. The point is that the work is freely available.
Thanks, this clears it up. The discrepancy is that I'm a researcher at a national lab, but not an employee of the US government. There are lots of such people.
Thus, copyright does seem to apply to work done by me.
I know from experience that the publication people at my lab will arm-twist to ensure copyright is not retained by an external publisher, like Springer or IEEE, and that the work remains openly available.
Regarding attempts to put things in the public domain, it is widely held that, at least in the USA, there are two possibilities. The first is that you can declare something to be in the public domain and put it into the public domain. The second is that declaring something to be in the public domain (even without an affadavit) forms a reliable estoppel in case the author wants to exercise his copyright later. The end result is that, either way, public domain dedications are seen by most people as legally reliable.
I did not know that authors who are not with the government had tried to put works in the public domain, that are submitted to IEEE. I didn't know this was possible.
I know it certainly is standard policy for government researchers and labs to retain copyright when work is submitted to IEEE (or anywhere).
Sometimes publishers say tough words about how this isn't possible, and you have to sign their copyright form, and you're holding up publication of the work. It's BS. The government copyright people will talk sense into them, and retain copyright so that the work can be distributed openly.