copyright formality Copyright formalities are legal (generally statutory law, statutory) requirements needed to obtain a copyright in a particular jurisdiction. Common copyright formalities include copyright registration, copyright renewal, copyright notice, and co ...

through which an initial term of

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...

protection for a work can be extended for a second term. Once the term of copyright protection has ended, the copyrighted work enters the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired ...

, and can be freely reproduced and incorporated into new works. In the United States, works published before are all in the public domain under the provisions of the

Copyright Act of 1909 The Copyright Act of 1909 () was a landmark statute in United States statutory copyright law. It went into effect on July 1, 1909. The 1909 Act was repealed and superseded by the Copyright Act of 1976, which went into effect on January 1, 1978; ...

and previous law. This act provided for an initial term of 28 years. This term could be extended for an additional 28 years by registering copyright renewal with the

United States Copyright Office The United States Copyright Office (USCO), a part of the Library of Congress, is a United States government body that maintains records of copyright registration, including a copyright catalog. It is used by copyright title searchers who ar ...

. Works published before 1964 in the US are all in the public domain, excepting only those for which a renewal was registered with the US Copyright Office. Relatively few works from this era have had their copyrights renewed. A US Copyright Office study in 1961 found that fewer than 15% of registered copyrights had been renewed. While the copyrights for most Hollywood movies were renewed, some were overlooked by mistake. One example was ''

It's a Wonderful Life ''It's a Wonderful Life'' is a 1946 American Christmas fantasy drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra, based on the short story and booklet ''The Greatest Gift'', which Philip Van Doren Stern self-published in 1943 and is in turn loos ...

'', whose 1946 copyright thus lapsed in 1975. However, this applied only to its images (allowing a colorized version);

Dimitri Tiomkin Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin (, ; May 10, 1894 – November 11, 1979) was a Russian-born American film composer and conductor. Classically trained in St. Petersburg, Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution, he moved to Berlin and then New York Ci ...

's score and the short story, from which the screenplay was adapted, had separate copyrights properly renewed. The US

Copyright Act of 1976 The Copyright Act of 1976 is a United States copyright law and remains the primary basis of copyright law in the United States, as amended by several later enacted copyright provisions. The Act spells out the basic rights of copyright holders, cod ...

modified these provisions so that the second, renewed term was 47 years. This extension applied to works that had been copyrighted between 1950 and 1977 and were thus in their first 28-year term of copyright protection, as well as to new works copyrighted after 1977. The maximum term of copyright protection became 75 years instead of the 56 years of the 1909 law, and applied to works whose copyrights were renewed in 1978 or later. Copyright renewal has largely lost its significance for works copyrighted in the US in 1964 or after due to the

Copyright Renewal Act of 1992 Copyright Renewal Act of 1992, , is the first title of the Copyright Amendments Act of 1992, an act of the United States Congress that amended copyright renewal provisions of Title 17 of the United States Code enacted under Copyright Act of 1 ...

. This law removed the requirement that a second term of copyright protection is contingent on a renewal registration. The effect was that any work copyrighted in the US in 1964 or after had a copyright term of 75 years, whether or not a formal copyright renewal was filed. There are some legal reasons for filing such renewal registrations. A further amendment to US copyright law in 1998

extended Extension, extend or extended may refer to: Mathematics Logic or set theory * Axiom of extensionality * Extensible cardinal * Extension (model theory) * Extension (predicate logic), the set of tuples of values that satisfy the predicate * Ext ...

the total term of protection to seventy years beyond the life of the creator (or for corporately-generated material, 95 years) which now applies to all works copyrighted in 1964 or after.

Determining whether a US copyright was renewed

Copyright renewal is significant for works with US copyright notices from –1963. All copyright registrations and renewal registrations are published by the Copyright Office in its ''

Catalog of Copyright Entries United States copyright registrations, renewals, and other catalog entries since 1978 are published online at the United States Copyright Office website. Entries prior to 1978 are not published in the online catalog. Copyright registrations and ren ...

''. For works with copyright notices from 1950 onward, the catalog can be searched online for renewals using a website maintained by the Copyright Office; the corresponding renewals are from 1978–1991. For copyrights from 1923–1949 (renewals from 1951–1977), online searches can be done for book copyrights using a database maintained by

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

. Many volumes of the ''Catalog of Copyright Entries'' have been digitized and can be accessed through the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

. Copies of the ''Catalog of Copyright Entries'' are available at the Copyright Office itself (in Washington, D.C., and at some libraries). For listings of renewals and non-renewals of periodicals and newspapers after 1923, see the complete report prepared by the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest- ...

Library.

References

External links

*{{cite web , title=Web Voyage , url=http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&PAGE=First , publisher=United States Copyright Office Online database for all copyrights registered or renewed in 1978 or after. For works with copyrights from 1950 or after, the renewal will appear here. United States copyright law

Determining whether a US copyright was renewed

See also

References

External links