Welcome to CopyrightData.com

Visitors to this site who are unfamiliar with copyright terminology and context should begin with the
step-by-step tree-view chart for answers about copyright law.
(see illustration at right)

Once readers have visited both the tree-view chart and one or more illustrations pages, they are advised to learn how courts have ruled on specific aspects of copyright by going to pages of Citations and Court Summaries and by reading the copyright laws themselves. (The CopyrightData web site has all versions of the United States Copyright Act in effect from 1909 to the present.)

Click below to go to:

First page of Illustrations section

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Visit this site’s flow-charts and tables to determine the copyright status of a work at http://chart.copyrightdata.com.

Read the text of every version of the United States Copyright Act from 1909 to the present, on this site at http://law.copyrightdata.com.

When a work that had been copyrighted ceases to have the legal protections afforded it by copyright, it’s said to be in the public domain.

Publishers, moviemakers, documentarians, educators, songwriters, singers, artists, musicals producers and investors can use public domain works to decrease their costs and use better earlier works than they otherwise would. At present, it’s difficult for them to determine what works are no longer under copyright (other than some well-known, often overused works). These people would benefit from a service that permits them to determine quickly what works are in the public domain.

Many artists and businesspeople know that American works copyrighted prior to 1923 are no longer under copyright, but the status of works copyrighted after those years has been more difficult to ascertain. The database to be produced by our company will fill a need experienced by those who have sought information as to which post-1923 works are in the public domain.

CopyrightData plans a database whereby users can specify what types of works they are interested in – then are delivered lengthy lists of works that meet their specifications.

There has never been anything like it!

What parameters might customers request? Specific composers, film directors, actors, authors, artists, publishers, movie studios, etc. Or “thriller novels 1940-1945,” “songs published by Tin Pan Alley firms,” “magazine articles analyzing the Cuban Missile Crisis at the time.” Our database will narrow its listings to these works, and then our unique collation feature will generate lists of works that are also known to have been copyrighted but not renewed.

WHO CAN PROFIT FROM THIS INFORMATION?:

Many businesspeople, artists, creators and educators can save money by reusing works no longer protected by copyright.

Publishers reprint older books even though the publisher has been incurring the costs of paying the author for the reprint. By having easily-accessible information about titles that equally-desirable to those that have been being reprinted — but without copyright — publishers can keep more of the sales price.
Moviemakers can make film versions of novels no longer protected by copyright and can incorporate footage from earlier motion pictures no longer protected.
Documentarians are dependant upon excerpts from earlier works for almost the entirety of some film documentaries, and thus they are prime candidates for being customers.
Companies that sell DVDs to the public can offer productions on which copyright no longer subsists and therefore does not necessitate payment to content creators.
Educators may want to eschew the current crop of whole-language readers and instead turn to phonics-based tutorials of the past.
Schools can save money by reprinting older educational materials themselves once they know that such can be legally reproduced without payment to previous rights holders.
Songwriters can interpolate passages from earlier works, musicals can be produced without fee, and web sites can offer classic news photographs on which copyright is not extant. All of these types of professionals are potential customers.
Television stations and cable networks can show movies for which fees needn’t be paid to the companies that didn’t maintain the rights
Catalogs can use illustrations from magazines, books and independently-created art
Audiobook publishers can create new spoken versions of works no longer protected by copyright. Expenses are reduced to the costs incurred in preparing the sound — sound which can be copyrighted, thereby giving the producers of the audio an edge over potential competition.
MP3 CDs are poised to become a large market; customers can appreciate the low cost of the product and thus buy more audiobooks than they did on cassettes and 80-minute CDs. Companies producing MP3 CDs benefit from public-domain literature reduce their production costs.

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Can it truly be said “ there has never been anything like it”?

“ Haven’t there been books?” Yes, there have been printed books listing the copyrighted motion pictures, collated with the renewal information, but the cost for the three volumes currently available (covering 1907-1959, only) is $855.00 — and that doesn’t give you the search functions you enjoy with a computer. Want collated records for anything other than motion pictures? — you’re out of luck!

“ Can’t I get this information from the Library of Congress?” For pre-1978 records, you can request a Search Report from the Library of Congress, but they charge $65 each title to do this work for you. If you want more than a bare minimum of works checked, that can run into a fantastic amount of money.

“ Isn’t there information on the web on non-LOC, academic web sites?” Yes, but it is cumbersome to use, displays slow-loading images rather than computer text, cannot be searched by machine, and does not collate registrations to renewals.

What assurance is there that this database will be properly and completely compiled?

The work will be overseen by a computer professional whose computer career has focused on databases. He was by profession for several years a General Manager of a company whose primary product was computer databases; he has created and maintained database; and he has a professional background in copyright research.

How will customers use this database?

1) Customers can email a request for a particular type of search. (Example: books issued by textbook publishers from 1960 to 1962.) The search will be conducted at CopyrightData, after which the results of that search will be forwarded to the customer. The results will provide titles that were copyrighted which matched the request, the pertinent data included in the copyright record, and highlighted to show which titles were discovered to have not been renewed. The charge to the customer will principally reflect the number of titles learned to be in the public domain. (There is little purpose in a customer paying for titles he cannot freely exploit.) The customer will not have direct access to the database over the internet. The computer on which the database resides at CopyrightData will not be networked nor ever connected to the internet.

Customers might also, at their choice, arrange through CopyrightData for delivery of Search Reports from the Library of Congress ascertaining what the Library of Congress determined about the copyright status of the works searched through CopyrightData. Search Reports from the Library of Congress can carry weight in legal procedings and thus be desirable adjuncts to the search conducted by private parties. CopyrightData might fill out the paperwork more expertly than might some of our customers.

2) Large customers likely would prefer outright purchase of the full database or of a sizable subsection of it. Firms interested only in song copyrights could purchase only the registrations and renewals for that media, whereas firms specializing in literature might only purchase the registrations and renewals for books and/or magazines. (Estimates are that these databases will be priced in the thousands of dollars.)

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CopyrightData will use computer technology to dig up data previously unknown!

Computer technology can calculate the number of years, months and days between registrations and renewal. If renewal took place outside the “window” of time permitted for a renewal to be valid, CopyrightData will discover it!
The computer can run an automated search on results to detect if another registration was made on the same work. If a work was registered twice, CopyrightData can figure it out right away. The system can instantly search for a renewal on the other registration — before the user has started to invest money under the wrongful assumption that an unrenewed registration means the likelihood of elapsed copyright protection.
Computer functions can seek underlying registrations in other media. If the copyright for a motion picture was not renewed but the copyright record indicates that the work was based on a play, the copyright status of the play can be looked up using the playwright name and work title given in the record.
Computer programming can recognize from the copyright date whether renewal had to occur during the 28th year and prior to the 28th anniversary, or whether the applicable law permitted renewal up through the end of the calendar year in which the 28th anniversary took place. This information can be displayed on screen for the benefit of users of the database.
Where a registration is of a work eligible for copyright in a country other than the United States, this might be recognized by the computer program and thus prompt the display of advisories to the user suggesting he seek evidence of a foreign-country registration (if required by that country and at that time), indicating the outline of pertinent GATT and NAFTA agreements and specifications as to how they affect works released during the particular year and in the particular country.

	Copyright registrations such as that for the 1950 version Cyrano de Bergerac specify earlier works. These underlying works should be investigated by potential users for copyright. In this case, Edmond Rostand's play had been first produced in 1897 in France. The Brian Hooker translation, copyrighted 1923, could still enjoy copyright protection.
	As with Cyrano, an earlier play should be investigated by potential users. The words “in notice” herein indicate that although the registration was taken out in 1951, the copyright notice on the film itself states 1950, which became the year of the work for purposes of calculating the length of the copyright term.
	This copyright notice indicates that the original work which constitutes the underlying copyright for the film, has a different title than that of the film. The validity of any underlying copyright remains so, nonetheless.
	Here, not only did the underlying work have a different title, but the production organization was located outside the United States. Depending upon GATT membership of the foreign country, the date of release of the film, the requirements of copyright in the other country, and perhaps other factors, there may be a foreign copyright to this film that could pose legal restraints upon Americans intending to use this film. CopyrightData, by incorporating the lists of Notices of Intent to Enforce Copyrights Restored Under the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, can alert users quickly to potential legal conflicts.

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