Copyright Law

A knowledge of current laws pertaining to copying or duplicating records or pages from reference books will prevent copyright violations. Copyright is a protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U.S. Code) to the authors of "original Works of authorship," including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. This protection is available to both published and unpublished works. Section 106 of the Copyright Act generally gives the owner of copyright the exclusive right to do and to authorize others to do the following:

• To reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords
• To prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work
• To distribute copies of phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending
• To perform the copyrighted work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works
• To display the copyrighted work publicly, in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work

It is illegal for anyone to violate any of the rights provided by the act to the owner of copyright. These rights, however, are not unlimited in scope. Sections 107 through 119 of the Copyright Act establish limitations on these rights. In some cases, these limitations are specified exemptions from copyright liability. One major limitation is the doctrine of "fair use," which is given a statutory basis in section 107 of the act. In other instances, the limitation takes the form of a "compulsory license" under which certain limited uses of copyrighted works are permitted upon payment of specified royalties and compliance with statutory conditions. For further information about the limitations of any of these rights, consult the Copyright Act or write to the Copyright Office.

Who Can Claim Copyright
Copyright protection exists from the time the work is created in fixed form; that is, it is an incident of the process of authorship. The copyright in the work of authorship immediately becomes the property of the author who created it. Only the author or those deriving their rights through the author can rightfully claim copyright.

Copyright protection is available for all unpublished works, regardless of the nationality or domicile of the author.

What Is and Is Not Protected by Copyright
Copyright protects "original works of authorship" that are fixed in a tangible form of expression. The fixation need not be directly perceptible, so long as it may be communicated with the aid of a machine or device. Copyrightable works include the following categories:

• Literary Works
• Musical Works, including any accompanying words
• Dramatic Works, including any accompanying music
  
• Pantomimes and choreagraphical works
  
• Pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works
  
• Motion pictures and other audiovisual works
  
• Sound recordings
  
• Architectural works

These categories should be viewed quite broadly. For example, computer programs and most "compilations" are registrable as "literary works"; maps and architectural plans are registrable as "pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works."

Several categories of material are generally not eligible for statutory copyright protection. These include, among others:

• Works that have not been fixed in a tangible form of expression
• Titles, names, short phrases, and slogans; familiar symbols or designs; mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, or coloring; mere listings of ingredients or contents
• Works consisting entirely of information that is common property and containing no original authorship. For example: standard calendars, height and weight charts, tape measures, and rulers, and lists or tables taken from public documents or other common sources
• Works by the U.S. government are not eligible for copyright protection.

Duration of Copyright Protection
A work that is crated (fixed in tangible form for the first time) on or after January 1978 is automatically protected from the moment of its creation and is ordinarily given a term enduring for the author's life, plus an additional fifty years after the author's death For works made for hire, and for anonymous and pseudonymous works (unless the author's identity is revealed in copyright records), the duration of copyright will be seventy-five years from publication or one hundred years from creation, whichever is shorter. Works that were created but not published or registered for copyright before 1 January 1978 have been automatically brought under the statute and are now given federal copyright protection. The duration of copyright in these works will generally be computed in the same way as for works created on or after 1 January 1978; the life-plus-fifty or seventy-five/one hundred-year terms will apply to them as well. Under the law in effect before 1978, copyright was secured either on the date a work was published or on the date of registration if the work was registered in unpublished form. In either case, the copyright endured for a first term of twenty-eight years from the date that it was secured. During the last (twenty-eighth) year of the first term, the copyright was eligible for renewal. The current copyright law has extended the renewal term from twenty-eight to forty-seven years for copyrights that were subsisting on 1 January 1978, making these works eligible for a total term of protection of seventy-five years.

For more detailed information on the copyright term, write to the Copyright Office and request circulars 15, 15a, and 15t.

For information on how to search the Copyright Office records concerning the copyright status of a work, request Circular 22.

The above information was culled from Circular 1: Copyright Basics (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1994). For a list of other material published by the Copyright Office, request Circular 2: Publications on Copyright (Copyright Office, LM-455, Library of Congress, Washington, DC 20559-6000). To speak to a copyright information specialist, call (202) 707-3000 between 8:30a.m. and 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time, Monday to Friday.