Copyright Act of 1831

Last updated
Copyright Act of 1831
Great Seal of the United States (obverse).svg
Long titleAn Act to Amend the Several Acts Respecting Copyrights
EffectiveFebruary 3, 1831
Citations
Statutes at Large 4 Stat. 436
Legislative history
United States Supreme Court cases

The Copyright Act of 1831 [1] was the first major revision to the U.S. Copyright Law. The bill is largely the result of lobbying efforts by American lexicographer Noah Webster.

Contents

The key changes in the Act included:

Noah Webster, most widely known for his dictionary, lobbied to amend the Copyright Act Noah Webster The Schoolmaster of the Republic.jpg
Noah Webster, most widely known for his dictionary, lobbied to amend the Copyright Act

Amendments

The law was amended a number of times for a wide variety of purposes. [2]

See also

Related Research Articles

Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186 (2003), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States upholding the constitutionality of the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA). The practical result of this was to prevent a number of works from entering the public domain in 1998 and following years, as would have occurred under the Copyright Act of 1976. Materials which the plaintiffs had worked with and were ready to republish were now unavailable due to copyright restrictions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United States Copyright Office</span> Government body in the United States

The United States Copyright Office (USCO), a part of the Library of Congress, is a United States government body that registers copyright claims, records information about copyright ownership, provides information to the public, and assists Congress and other parts of the government on a wide range of copyright issues. It maintains online records of copyright registration and recorded documents within the copyright catalog, which is used by copyright title researchers who are attempting to clear a chain of title for copyrighted works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Copyright Act of 1790</span> First U.S. federal legislation on copyright

The Copyright Act of 1790 was the first federal copyright act to be instituted in the United States, though most of the states had passed various legislation securing copyrights in the years immediately following the Revolutionary War. The stated object of the act was the "encouragement of learning," and it achieved this by securing authors the "sole right and liberty of printing, reprinting, publishing and vending" the copies of their "maps, charts, and books" for a term of 14 years, with the right to renew for one additional 14-year term should the copyright holder still be alive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Legal deposit</span> Legal requirement on publications

Legal deposit is a legal requirement that a person or group submit copies of their publications to a repository, usually a library. The number of copies required varies from country to country. Typically, the national library is the primary repository of these copies. In some countries there is also a legal deposit requirement placed on the government, and it is required to send copies of documents to publicly accessible libraries.

Wheaton v. Peters, 33 U.S. 591 (1834), was the first United States Supreme Court ruling on copyright. The case upheld the power of Congress to make a grant of copyright protection subject to conditions and rejected the doctrine of a common law copyright in published works. The Court also declared that there could be no copyright in the Court's own judicial decisions.

Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111 U.S. 53 (1884), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States that upheld the power of Congress to extend copyright protection to photography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Napoleon Sarony</span> American lithographer and photographer (1821–1896)

Napoléon Sarony was an American lithographer and photographer. He was a highly popular portrait photographer, best known for his portraits of the stars of late-19th-century American theater. His son, Otto Sarony, continued the family business as a theater and film star photographer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uruguay Round Agreements Act</span> US free trade law with implications for intellectual property

The Uruguay Round Agreements Act is an Act of Congress in the United States that implemented in U.S. law the Marrakesh Agreement of 1994. The Marrakesh Agreement was part of the Uruguay Round of negotiations which transformed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) into the World Trade Organization (WTO). One of its effects is to give United States copyright protection to foreign works that had previously been in the public domain in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Copyright Act of 1909</span> US federal legislation

The Copyright Act of 1909 was a landmark statute in United States statutory copyright law. It went into effect on July 1, 1909. The 1909 Act was repealed and superseded by the Copyright Act of 1976, which went into effect on January 1, 1978; but some of 1909 Act's provisions continue to apply to copyrighted works created before 1978. It allowed for works to be copyrighted for a period of 28 years from the date of publication and extended the renewal term from 14 years to 28 years, for a maximum of 56 years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Copyright registration</span> Legal process

The purpose of copyright registration is to place on record a verifiable account of the date and content of the work in question, so that in the event of a legal claim, or case of infringement or plagiarism, the copyright owner can produce a copy of the work from an official government source.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Copyright Term Extension Act</span> United States copyright law

The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act – also known as the Copyright Term Extension Act, Sonny Bono Act, or (derisively) the Mickey Mouse Protection Act – extended copyright terms in the United States in 1998. It is one of several acts extending the terms of copyright.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Copyright Act of 1976</span> United States law

The Copyright Act of 1976 is a United States copyright law and remains the primary basis of copyright law in the United States, as amended by several later enacted copyright provisions. The Act spells out the basic rights of copyright holders, codified the doctrine of "fair use", and for most new copyrights adopted a unitary term based on the date of the author's death rather than the prior scheme of fixed initial and renewal terms. It became Public Law number 94-553 on October 19, 1976, and went into effect on January 1, 1978.

The copyright law of the United States grants monopoly protection for "original works of authorship". With the stated purpose to promote art and culture, copyright law assigns a set of exclusive rights to authors: to make and sell copies of their works, to create derivative works, and to perform or display their works publicly. These exclusive rights are subject to a time and generally expire 70 years after the author's death or 95 years after publication. In the United States, works published before January 1, 1929, are in the public domain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thorvald Solberg</span> First Registrar of Copyrights (1852–1949)

Thorvald Solberg was the first Register of Copyrights (1897–1930) in the United States Copyright Office. He was a noted authority on copyright and played an instrumental role in shaping the Copyright Act of 1909.

Reed Elsevier, Inc. v. Muchnick, 559 U.S. 154 (2010), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States involving copyright law. The Court held that failure to register a copyright under Section 411 (a) of the United States Copyright Act does not limit a Federal Court's jurisdiction over claims of infringement regarding unregistered works.

The copyright law of the United States has a long and complicated history, dating back to colonial times. It was established as federal law with the Copyright Act of 1790. This act was updated many times, including a major revision in 1976.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Collective work (US)</span>

A collective work in the copyright law of the United States is a work that contains the works of several authors assembled and published into a collective whole. The owner of the work has the property rights in the collective work, but the authors of the individual works may retain rights in their contributions. Electronic reproduction of the whole work is allowed, but electronic reproduction of the individual works on their own, outside the context of the work as a whole, may constitute an infringement of copyright.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Copyright Act of 1870</span> Former United States law

The Copyright Act of 1870, also called the Patent Act of 1870 and the Trade Mark Act of 1870, was a revision to United States intellectual property law, covering copyrights and patents. Eight sections of the bill, sometimes called the Trade Mark Act of 1870, introduced trademarks to United States federal law, although that portion was later deemed unconstitutional after the Trade-Mark Cases.

Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, Inc., No. 18-1150, 590 U.S. ___ (2020), is a United States Supreme Court case regarding "whether the government edicts doctrine extends to—and thus renders uncopyrightable—works that lack the force of law, such as the annotations in the Official Code of Georgia Annotated" (OCGA). On April 27, 2020, the Court ruled 5–4 that the OCGA cannot be copyrighted because the OCGA's annotations were "authored by an arm of the legislature in the course of its legislative duties"; thus the Court found that the annotations fall under the government edicts doctrine and are ineligible for copyright.

References

  1. "Copyright Act, Washington D.C. (1831)" (PDF).
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Patry, William F. (2000). "Statutory Revision". Copyright Law and Practice. The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. Retrieved June 27, 2023.
  3. "Burrow-Giles Lithographic Company v. Sarony, 111 U.S. 53 (1884)". Justia Law. Retrieved 2018-11-08.

Further reading

Wikisource-logo.svg Works related to Copyright Act of 1831 at Wikisource