Letter to Shareholders Copywrites

I'll just be completely upfront. I'm thinking about building a web-site that would re-publish and archive Letters to Shareholders from publicaly filed annual reports. Does anyone know if the Letters to Shareholders would be public domain. It is my understanding that information filed with the SEC is public domain and therefore not copyprotected.

Thanks for any insight.

 

Great idea.
I would think that because of the subject of the site - a database of letters to the shareholders - you should not have any problems, they do seem like they would be public domain in that situation.
If someone was to use them to disparage a specific company, or a competitor use it as content in comparison or something, it would be different.
As for the exact legal standing, I don't know...

 

Tauren: This is what I was thinking. Plus it would be fun, because I love reading annual reports.

 

I think you should register a copyright for the word copywrites. just kidding!

 

This may not be useful, given you're talking about SEC filings, but I listen to a lot of companies' quarterly earnings conference calls, and almost all of them say that to record or transcribe the call would be a breach of copyright. I don't know if that's ever been legally tested, but I guess if sporting events can do it...

 

But when you listen to a conference call isn't the company that hosts the call creating that disclaimer, because they are going to sell the recording on their web-site. Besides an earning conference call (the audio nor transcript) are filed with the SEC.

I think I'm going to give this idea a go. I've already got the domain name LetterToShareholders.com