Federal government materials in the public domain include all government laws and regulations as well as materials and software developed by government employees. Public domain materials do not necessarily include government documents and software created by private sector companies for use by the government. Merely placing a document on the Internet for general access does notmake the document a contribution to the public domain even if the document does not bear a copyright notice. In this situation, transmitting the document to others or permitting copying by others is infringement unless you have permission to do so, and that permission should be in writing. Web links Web links can be a problem in tracking rights.
Any Web page can have links to other Web pages.
For example, a Web page for an intellectual property law firm may include a link that will enable the user to click once on the link to move directly to the Copyright Office home page or to a particular document within the Copyright Office site. In that instance, the Copyright Office materials are likely to be public domain materials, free for almost any use. Web links allow incredible flexibility, but use may also require a little detective work to determine ownership and what the user can do with the document. The Shetland case was later settled with the Shetland News permitted to use Shetland Times headlines, each with a credit to the Times plus a Times masthead logo next to each associated hyperlink. While this case was settled with Total News agreeing not to have Washington Post content appearing on the same screens with material associated with Total News, the United States seems to be reaching conclusions analogous to the The Shetland Times case.