Copyright Investigation

Copyright Investigation Methods

For further information about Copyright Investigantion, read:

• Copyright Formalities
• Copyright Notice
• Copyright and Public Domain
• Date in the Copyright Notice
• Duration of Copyright Protection in the U.S.
• Derivative Works and Copyright
• Name in the Copyright Notice
• Ad Interim copyright

Copyright investigations often involve the use of several methods of copyright nvestigation. And even if you follow the three methods bellow, the results may not be conclusive.

Moreover, the changes brought about under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988, the U.S. Copyright Renewal Act of 1992, and the U.S. Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 must be considered when investigating the copyright status of a work.

The main copyright investigation methods in the United States are:

1 Examine a copy of the work for such elements as a copyright notice, place and date of publication, author and publisher. If the work is a sound recording, examine the disc, tape, cartridge, or cassette in which the recorded sound is fixed, or the album cover, sleeve, or container in which the recording is sold.
2 Search the Copyright Office catalogs and other records.
3 Have the Copyright Office conduct a search for you.

The Copyright Office published the Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE) in printed format from 1891 through 1978. From 1979 through 1982 the CCE was issued in microfiche format. The CCE is divided into parts according to the classes of works registered. Each CCE segment covers all registrations made during a particular period of time. Renewal registrations made from 1979 through 1982 are found in Section 8 of the catalog. Renewals prior to that time are generally listed at the end of the volume containing the
class of work to which they pertained.

A number of libraries throughout the U. S. maintain copies of the CCE, and this may provide a good starting point if you wish to make a search yourself. There are some cases, however, in which a search of the CCE alone will not be sufficient to provide the needed information. For example, when the CCE entry is not a verbatim transcript of the
registration record and it does not contain the address of the copyright claimant.

Effective with registrations made since 1982 when the CCE was discontinued, the only method of searching CCE volumes outside the U.S. Library of Congress is by using the
Internet to access the online catalog. The Copyright Office has been digitizing the 660 volumes of the CCE and many are now available at www.archive.org/details/copyrightrecords/.

The online catalog contains entries from 1978 to the present.

U.S. Copyright Office records in machine-readable form cataloged from January 1, 1978, to the present, including registration and renewal information and recorded documents, are available for searching from the Copyright Office website at www.copyright.gov.

Upon request and at the statutory rate for each hour or fraction of an hour consumed, the U.S. Copyright Office staff will search the records of registrations and other recorded documents concerning ownership of copyrights and will provide a written report. If you request a cost estimate, the Copyright Office will provide one.

Certification of a search report is available for an additional fee. Certified searches are frequently requested to meet the evidentiary requirements of litigation.

Copyright does not protect names and titles, and the Library of Congress’ records lists many different works identified by the same or similar titles. Some brand names, trade names, slogans, and phrases may be entitled to protection under the general rules of law relating to unfair competition. They may also be entitled to registration under the provisions of the trademark laws. In the United States, questions about the trademark laws should be addressed to the U.S. Commissioner for Patents . Possible protection of names and titles under Common law principles of unfair competition is a question of State law .

Searches of the Copyright Office catalogs and records are useful in helping to determine the copyright status of a work, but they cannot be regarded as conclusive in all cases. The
complete absence of any information about a work in the Office records does not mean that the work is unprotected.

The following are examples of cases in which information about a particular work may be incomplete or lacking entirely in the Copyright Office:

• Before 1978, unpublished works were entitled to protection under Common law without the need of registration.
• Works published with notice prior to 1978 may be registered at any time within the first 28-year term.
• Works copyrighted between January 1, 1964, and December 31, 1977, are affected by the Copyright Renewal Act of 1992, which automatically extends the copyright term and makes renewal registrations optional.
• For works under copyright protection on or after January 1,1978, registration may be made at any time during the term of protection. Although registration is not required as a condition of copyright protection, there are certain advantages to registration (see Copyright Notice).
• Since searches are ordinarily limited to registrations that have already been cataloged, a search report may not cover recent registrations for which catalog records are not yet available.
• The work may have been registered under a different title or as part of a larger work.

Even if you conclude that a work is in the public domain in the United States, this does not necessarily mean that you are free to use it in other countries. Every country has its own laws governing the length and scope of copyright protection, and these are applicable to uses of the work within that nation’s borders. Thus, the expiration or loss of copyright protection in the United States may still leave the work fully protected against unauthorized use in other countries.

On October 19, 1976, the United States President signed into law a complete revision of the copyright law of the United States (title 17 of the United States Code). Most provisions of this statute came into force on January 1, 1978, superseding the Copyright Act of 1909. These provisions made significant changes in the copyright law.

Further important changes resulted from the Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988, which took effect March 1, 1989; the U.S. Copyright Renewal Act of 1992,
enacted June 26, 1992, which amended the renewal provisions of the copyright law; and the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, enacted October 27, 1998, which extended the term of copyrights for an additional 20 years.

Author: admin

Author: admin

Mentioned in these Entries

Absence of Copyright Notice, Ad Interim copyright, Berne Convention, Common law, Copyright Formalities, Copyright Notice, Copyright and Public Domain, Derivative Works and Copyright, Duration of Copyright Protection in the U.S., Name in the Copyright Notice, Patents, State law, country.