Book People Archive

Re: A summary timeline of recent US copyright extensions

You gave a very good timeline, John. I just want to comment on a few 
items.


>   -- 1909-1962: US copyright terms run for 28 years if not renewed,
>                 56 years if renewed.  According to a 1961 Copyright
>                 Office study, fewer than 15% of registered copyrights
>                 get renewed when the time comes to do so.


Did that "15%" figure come from the 1961 Register's Report I've linked 
to a few times? Since books are the focus of the BP List, I want to 
mention that the report also gave renewal rates for the different 
classes "during a recent year" and that the rate for "'books' (which 
includes text material published in various forms)" was only about "7 
percent."


>   -- 1962:      All renewed copyrights extended to Dec. 31, 1965
>                 or later....


Actually, the 1962 extension (Public Law 87-668) didn't extend any 
copyrights beyond Dec. 31, 1965.


>                            This was the first of a series of short
>                 extensions intended to "freeze" renewed copyrights
>                 until an overhauled copyright regime patterned after the
>                 Berne Convention could be passed....


Well, the 1976 Act ended up having a number of features patterned 
after the Berne Convention, e.g. a life+50 copyright term for new 
works (with exceptions), but I don't think that was the intention in 
1962. For instance, the Register's Report a year earlier recommended: 
"We believe that the copyright term should continue to be divided, so 
that copyrights not renewed would terminate 28 years after first 
publication or other dissemination." It also recommended increasing 
the renewal term to 48 years. And those were the same figures 
mentioned in the 1962 letter that I quoted a few posts ago from 
Nicholas Katzenbach, the Acting Deputy Attorney General, to the 
Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.


>                                From this point onward, all renewed
>                 copyright terms would be rounded up to the end of
>                 the year.


Yes, the nine short extensions for renewed copyrights kept using Dec. 
31st, but during that period copyrights that weren't renewed were 
still expiring 28 years from the "date of first publication." It 
wasn't until the 1976 Act that end of year expiration became the 
general rule. See Section 305:


"305. Duration of copyright: Terminal date

"All terms of copyright provided by sections 302 through 304 run to 
the end of the calendar year in which they would otherwise expire."

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap3.html#305



Jose Menendez


P.S. By the way, you may recall back in January, I mentioned that the 
Union of Serbia and Montenegro had been using a life+70 term since 
January 1, 2005, but I didn't know if expired copyrights had been 
restored.

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/bparchive?year=2006&post=2006-01-13,8

Well, their Intellectual Property Office has an English version of its 
website up.

http://www.yupat.sv.gov.yu/index.php?language=eng

It turns out that the term extension was not retroactive. See

The Law on Copyright and Related Rights
http://www.yupat.sv.gov.yu/pdf/eng/propisi/autorsko/copyright_law.pdf


"Article 195

"Articles 100, paragraph 1, 101, 102 and 103 of this Law shall not 
apply to works of authorship whose term of protection has lapsed on 
the day this Law enters into force of."