Section 9. No copy shall subsist in any work of the Government of the Philippines. However, prior approval of the government agency or office wherein the work is created shall be necessary for exploitation of such work for profit. Such agency or office may, among other things, impose as a condition the payment of royalties. No prior approval or condition shall be required for the use for any purpose of statutes, rules and regulations, and speeches, lecturers, sermons, addresses, and dissertations pronounced, read or rendered in courts of justice before administrative agencies, in deliberate assemblies, and in meetings of public character.

A "Work of the Government of the Philippines" is a work created by any officer or employee of the Philippine Government or any of its subdivisions and instrumentalities, including government owned or controlled corporations as a part of his regularly prescribed official duties.

Notwithstanding the foregoing provisions, the Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyright transferred to it by assignment, bequests or otherwise; nor shall publication or republication by the Government in a public document of any work in which copyright is subsisting be taken to cause any abridgment or annulment of the copyright or to authorize any use of appropriation of such work without the consent of the copyright proprietor.