User:Durin/Letter to Alaska

In support of discussions regarding the status of various state seals (see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Licensing#Template:US_state_seal), I contacted the Lieutenant Governor's office of Alaska regarding the copyright status of the state seal of Alaska. Below is the text sent to that office by way of [1] on 19 June 2007.

Original letter

Greetings,

I am interested to know the copyright status of the Seal of Alaska. According to http://ltgov.state.ak.us/stateseal.php, commercial use of the seal must be with permission of your office. This was upheld in Robart v. State (01/23/2004) ap-1914 (http://touchngo.com/ap/html/ap-1914.htm).

However, the seal was first published in 1910. By law, works published in the United States prior to 1923 are in the public domain. Alaska was a territory of the United States at the time. Therefore, the seal is in the public domain by way of age, is it not?

I am asking this question as a result of discussions regarding the use of state seals in general on the English language Wikipedia. In particular, it is claimed that the Alaska state seal is in the public domain. Please see http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:AlaskaStateSealTransparent.png and that it is in the public domain due another version existing on the U.S. German Embassy website (http://usa.usembassy.de/alaska.htm) which has a statement that the image is public domain unless otherwise noted on the page (see http://usa.usembassy.de/disclaimer.htm).

I'd like to know what the copyright status of the Seal of Alaska is, and on what basis that copyright status exists.

Thank you for your time

First response

We are in receipt of your correspondence regarding copyright and Alaska's Great Seal. It may take some time to prepare a response, but we do intend to address your questions after a proper investigation of the issues you raise.

Please let me know if your contact information changes in the meantime, and thank you for your patience while we work on an answer your inquiry.