1909 Copyright Act

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[edit] Introduction

The 1909 Copyright Act was a landmark statute in United States statutory copyright law. The Act was superseded by the 1976 Copyright Act, but it remains effective for copyrighted works created before the 1976 Act went into effect on January 1, 1978. It allowed for works to be copyrighted for a period of 28 years from the date of publication, renewable for a second 28-year term.

[edit] Dual System

Under the 1909 Act, there were two systems of copyright in the United States. State law protected unpublished works. When a work was published, it generally lost state law protection. Federal statutory copyright protection attached to an original work only when that work was 1) published and 2) had a notice of copyright affixed. Thus, state copyright law governed protection for unpublished works, but published works, whether containing a notice of copyright or not, were governed exclusively by federal law.

If no notice of copyright was affixed to a work and the work was "published" in a legal sense, the 1909 Act provided no copyright protection and the work became part of the public domain. The 1976 Act changed this result, providing that copyright protection attaches to works that are original and fixed in a tangible medium of expression, regardless of publication or affixation of notice.

[edit] External links

• Full text of the Sept. 1972 revision of the Copyright Act of 1909 (misleadingly labeled).

• 1909 Act as originally passed and each revision.

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