Copyright: Its History and Its LawBowker, R. R. (Richard Rogers)
History
Copyright: Its History and Its Law
Bowker, R. R. (Richard Rogers)
Copyright -- History; Copyright -- United States -- History
As a lecture or other work intended for oral delivery or a dramatic or
musical work or a work of art, an unpublished dramatic or musical work
or a work of art not reproduced in copies for sale is copyrightable
without reference to date of publication, it is not altogether certain
whether the term extends from the date of registration or the date of
first delivery, performance or exhibition, or whether the statutory law
now protects such a work under common law as unpublished, pending
publication and therefore for an indefinite period if not practically in
perpetuity. The Copyright Office issues a certificate for twenty-eight
years, but without reference to initial date, which would be presumably
the date of the certificate. The Copyright Office will doubtless, under
this precedent, issue renewal certificate for the second term of
twenty-eight years.
{Sidenote: Publication as date of copyright}
As the new copyright code makes publication with notice the basis of
copyright instead of entry and deposit, as formerly, the term of
copyright now dates from publication, and "the date of publication" is
specifically defined (sec. 62) as "the earliest date when copies of the
first authorized edition were placed on sale, sold, or publicly
distributed by the proprietor of the copyright or under his authority."
Such date is included in the application for registry at the Copyright
Office, and on the same day twenty-eight years or fifty-six years
thereafter the copyright ends. A provision for terminating copyrights at
the end of the calendar year of expiration was included in the early
drafts of the code, but was not included in the law as enacted.
{Sidenote: Serial publication}
In the case of works published and copyrighted as serials, as a novel
published in parts in a monthly magazine, the copyright runs technically
from the first publication of each part; and at the end of the
twenty-eight or fifty-six years, each part could be successively
published at monthly intervals free from copyright. Practically,
however, such a copyrighted serial could not be published complete until
twenty-eight or fifty-six years from the publication of the last part.
In usual practice a novel is printed in book form a month or two before
its completion as a serial in a magazine, and the date of the copyright
on the completed work would then terminate at the end of the
twenty-eight or fifty-six years from publication in book form.
{Sidenote: Joint authorship}
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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