Copyright Law

The United States Copyright Act is a federal legislation that has been in effect since January 1, 1978. The Copyright Act is a form of protection granted to the authors of original works, including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, and certain other intellectual works. Both published and unpublished works are covered by this protection. The Copyright Act today also covers architectural design, software, the graphic arts, motion pictures, and sound recordings.

Copyright protection is applied to original works of authorship permanent in any physical means of expression from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or conveyed, either directly or with the help of a machine or device.

The Copyright Office of the Library of Congress is the federal agency in-charged with administering the act. In accordance with the Copyright Act the copyright registration is voluntary and may occur at any period throughout the protection term. While registration of a work for copyright is not a prerequisite for protection, a copyright infringement action may not be initiated until the copyright has been formally registered with the Copyright Office.

The Copyright Act generally grants the copyright owner the exclusive right to do the following: to reproduce, duplicate, copy or transcribe works; to prepare derivative works based upon the work; to distribute copies of the work publicly by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending; to perform the 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 by means of a film, slide, or television image at a public place or to transmit it to the public including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work; and in the case of sound recordings, to perform the work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.

Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works All works published and distributed publicly after March 1, 1989 no longer require notice for their protection and also infringement action may now be commenced without registering the work with the U.S. Copyright Office provided that works have originated from a Berne Convention country.

Limitations on the Exclusive Rights

The exclusive rights of the copyright owner have major exceptions and limitations which allow others to have the right to make limited use of a copyrighted work.

Ideas: The copyright does not extend to the work’s ideas, procedures, processes, systems, methods of operation, concepts, principles, or discoveries.

Facts: The copyright protects only originality and not the work’s facts regardless of the author’s effort, time, and money when discovering those facts.

Independent Creation: An independent creation of a similar copyrighted work does not infringe any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner.

Fair Use: Use of works for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or research is deemed by law as fair use and is not an infringement of owner’s copyright.