Copyright initially was conceived as a way for government to restrict printing ; the contemporary intent of copyright is to promote the creation of new works by giving authors control of and profit from them.

The Universal Copyright Convention was drafted in 1952 as another less demanding alternative to the Berne Convention, and ratified by nations such as the Soviet Union and developing nations.

Copyright law recognises the right of an author based on whether the work actually is an original creation, rather than based on whether it is unique ; two authors may own copyright on two substantially identical works, if it is determined that the duplication was coincidental, and neither was copied from the other.

", or the word " Copyright ", followed by the year of the first publication of the work and the name of the copyright holder — was part of U. S. statutory requirements.

In 1998 the length of a copyright in the United States was increased by 20 years under the Copyright Term Extension Act.

The problem comes from the fact that before the Copyright Act of 1976 the number of years a work was copyrighted in the U. S. was based on publication rather than life of the author plus a certain number of years and that it was good for only 28 years.

Also there was John Romero's Dangerous Dave series, which included such notables as the tech demo ( In Copyright Infringement ) which led to the Commander Keen engine, and the decently popular Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion.

Although that bill was never voted on in the Senate, a similar Senate bill was passed after his death and named the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in his memory.

The length of copyright was also altered ; the Copyright Act 1814 set a copyright term of either 28 years, or the natural life of the author if this was longer.

Talfourd's Act was finally passed as the Copyright Act 1842, but " fell far short of Talfourd's dream of a uniform, consistent, codified law of copyright ".

The WIPO Copyright Treaty made no reference to copyright term extension beyond the existing terms of the Berne Convention, but there was a degree of association.

This was because the United States Congress passed both the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which enacts copyright term extension during the same week and used the same method using voice vote to make it less likely that the news media would report on the bills.

Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U. S. 186 ( 2003 ) was a court case in the United States challenging 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 Law of 1976.

The decision to emphasize the Copyright clause argument was based on both the minority opinion of Judge Sentelle in the appeals court, and on several recent Supreme Court decisions authored by Chief Justice William Rehnquist: United States v. Lopez and United States v. Morrison.

Callaghan moved an amendment to the Copyright Bill then under consideration in the Lords to extend the term under which the hospital could continue to collect royalties, despite the lapse of copyright, and this was accepted by the government.

On November 14, 2007, it was reported that the satirical website b3ta. com had pulled their " image challenge of the week " devoted to Prince after legal threats from the star under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Copyright was extended to this form.

In addition, works published before 1964 that did not have their copyrights renewed 28 years after first publication year also are in the public domain, except that books originally published outside the US by non-Americans are exempt from this requirement, if they are still under copyright in their home country ( see How Can I Tell Whether a Copyright Was Renewed for more details ).

The strips, along with most of the rest of McCay's works, fell into the public domain in most of the world on January 1, 2005, 70 years after McCay's death ( see Copyright and the EU's Directive harmonizing the term of copyright protection for details ).

but legislation called the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act extended copyright from 50 to 70 years after the author's death, cutting off its supply of new material.

No new limitations may come into force after 22 June 2001 except those in the permitted limitations given in the Copyright Directive.

This preliminary injunction applied to all copied articles for which the plaintiffs had registered copyright with the U. S. Copyright Office or that were published after March 13, 1995, the date Russia signed the Berne Convention.

Copyright owners have the exclusive statutory right to exercise control over copying and other exploitation of the works for a specific period of time, after which the work is said to enter the public domain.

The new parliament was able to change the laws in both countries and an important early piece of legislation was the Copyright Act of 1709, also known as the Statute of Anne, after Queen Anne.

Industry Canada announced on June 11, 2008, that Prentice " will deliver brief statements and answer media inquiries shortly after the tabling of a bill to amend the Copyright Act ... Thursday, June 12, 2008 ".

Photographer not identified, so UK Copyright contended to have lapsed 50 years after publication.

Photographer not identified, so UK Copyright contended to have lapsed 50 years after publication.

Photographer not identified, so UK Copyright contended to have lapsed 50 years after publication.

In 1998 the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act was passed, preventing Eldred's plans to scan and publish works first published in the U. S. after 1922.

One year after Canada passed its colonial law on copyright, the UK Parliament passed a new imperial statute on copyright, the Copyright Act 1842.

Most of Harmoniums poems were published between 1914 and 1923 in various magazines, so most are now in the public domain in America and similar jurisdictions, as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act affects only works first published after 1922.

Canada has created a supplemental licensing scheme that allows licenses for the use of published works to be issued by the Copyright Board of Canada on behalf of unlocatable copyright owners, after a prospective licensor has made " reasonable efforts to locate the owner of the copyright ".

The long time Asia-Pacific Laser manufacturer Performance Sailcraft Australasia ( PSA ), after receiving permission from ISAF, acquired the Copyright and worldwide building and marketing rights to the single handed Byte and Byte CII dinghy in 2012.

Formally known as the " International Copyright Act of 1891 ", but more commonly referred to as the " Chace Act " after Sen. Jonathan Chace of Rhode Island.

Not long after the passage of the 1976 Copyright Act, the scope of contributory infringement liability was tested in a case in which the copyright owners claimed that the sale of a recording device – the VCR-illegally contributed to infringement.

Copyright protection usually lasts for seventy years after the death of the last publicly-identified author.

In order to encourage the local printing and publishing industry Canada made a number of diplomatic and legislative efforts to limit the effects of the imperial Copyright Act 1842.

All provisions granting copyright in perpetuity were abolished by the Copyright, Designs and patents Act 1988, but under transitional arrangements ( Schedule I, section 13 ( 1 )) these printing rights do not fully expire until 2039.

The 1832 Copyright Act was short, and declared ambitions to encourage emergence of a literary and artistic nation and to encourage literature, bookshops and the local press.

On 16 October 2008 a press release was published by Tizard responding to " alarmist claims made by a small group of IT commentators in the media that recent amendments to the Copyright Act would have ISPs cutting off the accounts of their users based on unsubstantiated accusations of copyright infringement.

* Operation Safehaven: Ohio Man Pleads Guilty to Copyright Infringement, press release by the US Department of Justice on Singh plea ( February 20, 2004 )