Copyright status
Reader Lexi has a great question about using materials that were copyrighted, but might not still be copyright-protected today.
Her particular reason for asking the question is that she teaches art to children, has a book of children’s poems she’d like to use in her classes and have the children do artwork to illustrate the poems. And then, she hopes, she can put the artwork and the poems together into a book and sell it as a fundraiser for her school.
It’s a great idea — but will it be a copyright problem since the book was published in 1953?
Lexi notes, correctly, that materials published in the United States between 1923 and 1963 had to have a copyright notice in the publication and were then copyright-protected for a term of 28 years.1 But that initial copyright term could be renewed for a second period — originally 28 years under the Copyright Act of 19092 and then changed by statute, first to 47 years3 and then to 67 years.4
If the copyright was not renewed as the law then required, then the copyright on a book published in 1953 would have expired at the end of the 28th year of the initial copyright protection term5 or 31 December 1981. But if the copyright was renewed in that 28th year, the total copyright term for the work is 95 years (28 years plus 67 years), and the work will be copyright-protected until 31 December 2048.
Now the odds are pretty good that any given copyright won’t have been renewed. The Copyright Office reported that, as of 1960, copyright renewal rates for books were roughly seven percent and for periodicals about 11 percent.6 But playing the odds isn’t a safe bet when the consequences of copyright infringement can include statutory damages of up to $30,000 for a single violation.7
So… how do you know if a copyright was renewed or not? While the question here is focused on poetry, it’s a question we often encounter as genealogists when we try to figure out if we can use material created by others as part of our own publications — our genealogy society journals, our family histories, even blogs like this one.
And there are at least four options for getting an answer.
The first, and most expensive but most reliable, is to go yourself or pay somebody to check the records of the U.S. Copyright Office. The renewal records are kept at Copyright Office at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The office is open Monday—Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., eastern time.8 You can even get the Copyright Office to do the research for you, but there is a fee — and it’s hefty (a minimum of two hours at $200 an hour).9
Second, you can find a library that has the Copyright Office’s publication, the Catalog of Copyright Entries, issued in printed format from 1891 through 1978 and in microfiche from 1979 through 1982.10 The hitch with the CCE is that it won’t show assignments of rights, so if the item you want is still copyrighted, you’ll still need to do more research to be sure who owns the rights today.11
Third, you can check for online versions of the CCE. One major collection is at Internet Archive, with 674 entries (some of which, of course, are duplicates), and another is on The Online Books Page from the University of Pennsylvania, with most if not all of the digitized records of both registrations and renewals accessible from one entry portal.
And finally you can check the searchable database prepared by Stanford University from the Project Gutenberg transcriptions and other records. The big advantage to this database is that it only includes renewals.
All of the online records, of course, have the potential for error. Stanford, for example, reported that its error rate was “less than 1%,” but cautioned that “in practice there is significant opportunity for user error or other problems in searching.”12 Using all of the online methods, however, should reduce the chances for making a mistake and, if the stakes are high enough, paying the Copyright Office for a search to be sure is the way to go.
For more background on checking the copyright status of a work, you should also download and read the Copyright Office’s Circular 22, How to Investigate the Copyright Status of a Work and the University of Pennsylvania’s Online Books Page has a nice overview: “How Can I Tell Whether a Copyright Was Renewed?”
SOURCES
- U.S. Copyright Office, Circular 15a: Duration of Copyright, PDF version at p. 2 (http://www.copyright.gov : accessed 28 Mar 2016). ↩
- §23, “An Act To amend and consolidate the Acts respecting copyright,” 35 Stat. 1075, 1080 (4 Mar 1909). ↩
- Copyright Act of 1976, 90 Stat. 2541 (19 Oct 1976). ↩
- Copyright Term Extension Act, 112 Stat. 2827 (27 Oct 1998). ↩
- Copyrights expire on 31 December of the last year of their term. See U.S. Copyright Office, Circular 15a: Duration of Copyright, PDF version at p. 2. ↩
- Barbara A. Ringer, Renewal of Copyright (June 1960), in Copyright Law Revision: Studies Prepared for the (Senate Judiciary Committee), Studies 29-31, 86th Congress, 2d Session (Washington, D.C. : Government Printing Office, 1961), 220. ↩
- 17 U.S.C. §504(c)(1). ↩
- See “Hours of Service and Location,” U.S. Copyright Office (http://www.copyright.gov/ : accessed 28 Mar 2016). ↩
- See ibid., “Fees.” ↩
- See U.S. Copyright Office, Circular 22: How to Investigate the Copyright Status of a Work, PDF version at pp. 1-2 (http://www.copyright.gov : accessed 28 Mar 2016). ↩
- Ibid., at 2. ↩
- “Welcome,” Copyright Renewal Database, Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (https://collections.stanford.edu/copyrightrenewals/ : accessed 28 Mar 2016). ↩
Can we check with the publisher? Or the author?
If you can find the author and/or the publisher is still in business, sure!
Judy,
Helpful summary. If nothing in a book indicates that it was ever copyrighted, how early does it have to be printed for there to be no concern at all about copyright protection?
My gg grandfather privately published a book in three parts beginning in 1866. He sent a copy to the Library of Congress, and the spine of their rebound copy says 1866. On the title page, he says ” Saint Louis: Published by” and gives his name. Then he gives “Printed by” and gives the name and address of the printer. He doesn’t say the printer was in St. Louis, but I was able to verify this. He repeats this information for the second part, also published and printed in 1866. He lived in the St. Louis area. By the time he published the third part, he lived near Springfield, Illinois, so while he repeats the pattern, the name of the printer has changed to one in Springfield. The date is now 1867. He also says “This Pamphlet completes the book.”
There is what looks like an official stamp on the first page of the first part saying “Library of Congress City of Washington” with 1870. I suspect that is the date LOC received the copy he sent to them. The other two parts are such dark copies that I can’t tell if the LOC imprint is there.
My questions are whether or not the lack of a visible printed copyright, or the age of the book, means this book is out of copyright? What uses of the contents can I make?
Doris
Sending the book to the Library of Congress was most likely to comply with the deposit requirement, so for purposes of copyright protection. But… most importantly, anything published in the United States before 1923 is now out of copyright. So you can make whatever uses you’d like of this book.
Judy,
So his sending it to LOC means that he did copyright it, though it’s not marked as such? I do understand that the early date means it’s now out of copyright and the family can use it as we wish.
Thanks,
Doris
Without checking the registrations, I couldn’t be sure, but deposit with the Library of Congress was a part of the registration process so at least it suggests that he tried to copyright it.
Follow-up question:
This is a book of poetry. What is the copyright status on the individual poems?
The original publisher might have gotten rights to reprint the poems in this volume and to re-print this particular volume, but what happened when the book was declared out of print? And in any case, did the authors retain the rights to have the poems published elsewhere? Do those rights pass to the poet’s estate after the poet is deceased?
A collection could have merely a compilation copyright, true, in which case there could be two levels of protection: one for the publisher and one for the individual poet. If each poet only gave permission for the poem to be published, however, rather than transferring all rights to the publisher, then the poet should have secured an independent copyright which would still have had to be renewed within the statutory time period.
I am just now going back through my 2500 name genealogy database and adding source information. I have 30 years of random source documentation saved in ten binders and scanned but I did not regularly reference the material in my database software. (Mistakes of an amateur). The copyright mine field makes me hesitate to include scanned images of the documents as part of the source information but the source reference description appears very sterile compared to the actual images. My documentation includes a multitude of original Birth and baptism certificates dating as far back as the 1880’s, Original Grave plot contracts from the same vintage, Newspaper clippings and reprints pre and post 1923, as well as certificates I have ordered from various state vital record sources and the GRO in the UK.
The ancestry sourced facts with the referenced actual media links look so much more complete. Only a small percentage of my original source material actually has the DO NOT Copy shown on the documents.
Some of the early 20th century genealogy books can be found online in multiple places and it is hard to know what has been duplicated legally with no copy write and what has been bootlegged. I could use the generic pre-1923 is OK but it is easier to just not include any scanned images in the database and continue to share my binders with anybody who feigns an interest.