https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20181025/01014540908/eu-court-justice-advocate-general-no-course-you-cant-copyright-military-reports.shtml > Last year we mentioned an interesting (or crazy, depending on your point of view) case that was being sent to the EU Court of Justice (CJEU), on a German case, exploring whether or not a German newspaper had infringed on the government's copyrights in publishing leaked military reports about German operations in Afghanistan (which people are calling the "Afghanistan Papers"). And, yes, as we've discussed before, while US copyright law is quite explicit that works created by our federal government cannot be subject to copyright law, many other countries do have a terrible and highly questionable concept of "crown copyright." In most cases -- including the one at the heart of this case -- such laws are used to stifle the press and freedom of speech. Here it's quite obvious that the case is being brought not because of the copyright incentives in these military reports, but in an attempt to stifle the leaks and intimidate the media from publishing such things. > Either way, the CJEU's Advocate General has weighed in and is now saying that there can be no copyright interest in such a document: