In the United States, the Copyright Clause of the United States Constitution and the first Federal copyright statute, the Copyright Act of 1790, both draw on the Statute of Anne.

# That by retroactively extending copyright terms, Congress had violated the requirements of the Constitution's Copyright Clause, which gives Congress the following power: " To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries " ( emphasis added ) Plaintiffs argued that by reading this formulation so as to allow for any number of retroactive extensions, Congress could in practice guarantee an unlimited period of copyright protection, thus thwarting the intent of the clause.

Category: Copyright Clause case law

This statute, purported to be an exercise of the Copyright Clause powers, was struck down in the Trade-Mark Cases, leading Congress to finally create a successful act under its Commerce Clause power in 1881.

The U. S. Supreme Court invalidated the first federal trademark law by finding that Congress could not stretch the Copyright Clause to cover trademarks, so Congress had to fall back to only those trademarks used in interstate commerce instead.

These proposals are the origin of the Copyright Clause in the United States Constitution, which allows the granting of copyright and patents for a limited time to serve a utilitarian function, namely " to promote the progress of science and useful arts ".

These proposals are the origin of the Copyright Clause in the United States Constitution, which allows the granting of copyright and patents for a limited time to serve a utilitarian function, namely " to promote the progress of science and useful arts ".

Uncreative collections of facts are outside of Congressional authority under the Copyright Clause ( Article I, § 8, cl.

The Patent and Copyright Clause of the US Constitution was proposed in 1787 by James Madison and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney.

The Paper contains the only reference to the Copyright Clause in the Federalist Papers.

The two main arguments against the application of the Act in the case were that restoring copyright violates the " limited time " language of the United States Constitution's Copyright Clause, and that restoring to copyright works that had passed into the public domain interferes with the peoples ' First Amendment right to use, copy and otherwise exploit the works and to freely express themselves through these works, thus also violating the Constitution's Copyright Clause.

On September 4, 2007, Judge Robert H. Henry of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court's dismissal of the CTEA claim, as foreclosed by Eldred, and the district court's holding that § 514 of the URAA does not exceed the limitations inherent in the Copyright Clause.

Category: Copyright Clause case law

The United States Copyright Office defines copyright as " a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States ( title 17, U. S. Code ) to authors of " original works of authorship ".

In 1989 the United States enacted the Berne Convention Implementation Act, amending the 1976 Copyright Act to conform to most of the provisions of the Berne Convention.

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

* Copyright in architecture in the United States

Questions center over whether copyrights for Lovecraft's works were ever renewed under the terms of the United States Copyright Act of 1976 for works created prior to January 1, 1978.

Known collectively as " Artists United Against the U. S. Orphan Works Acts ", the diverse organizations joined forces to oppose the bills, which the groups believe " permits, and even encourages, wide-scale infringements while depriving creators of protections currently available under the Copyright Act.

Under United States Copyright Law, " titles, names [...]; mere variations of typographic ornamentation, lettering, or coloring " are not eligible for copyright ; however, the appearance of signatures ( not the names themselves ) may be protected under copyright law.

The United States only provided copyright protection for a fixed, renewable term, and required that in order for a work to be copyrighted it must contain a copyright notice and be registered at the Copyright Office.

Under the Second Protocol of the Universal Copyright Convention ( Paris text ), protection under U. S. Copyright Law is expressly required for works published by the United Nations, by U. N. specialized agencies and by the Organization of American States.

The WIPO Copyright Treaty is implemented in United States law by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ( DMCA ).

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.

** The Copyright Act of 1976 extends copyright duration for an additional 20 years in the United States.

** The Copyright Act of 1976 takes effect, making sweeping changes to United States copyright law.

* March 3 – The International Copyright Act of 1891 is passed by the Fifty-first United States Congress.

In protest against legislation that prohibits publication of copy protection circumvention code in countries that implement the WIPO Copyright Treaty ( such as the United States ' Digital Millennium Copyright Act ), some have devised clever ways of distributing descriptions of the DeCSS algorithm, such as through steganography, through various Internet protocols, on t-shirts and in dramatic readings, as MIDI files, as a series of haiku poems, and even as a so-called illegal prime number.

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 United States Constitution gives Congress the power to enact laws establishing a system of copyright in the United States, and the Copyright Act of 1790, the first federal copyright law, was enacted in May 1790 ( with the first work being registered within two weeks ).

" The company argued that photographs could not qualify as " writings " or as the production of an " author ", in the language of the grant of power to Congress under article I, section 8, clause 8 of the United States Constitution to protect copyrights, and so § 4952 of the Copyright Act of 1870, which explicitly extended protection to photographs, was unconstitutional.

The unauthorized decryption of CSS-encrypted DVD content and / or the unauthorized distribution of CSS decryption tools may violate the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, although the decryption of CSS-encrypted DVD content has been temporarily authorized for certain purposes ( such as documentary filmmaking that uses short portions of DVD content for criticism and / or commentary ) under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act anticircumvention exemptions that were issued by the US Copyright Office in 2010.

" The WIPO Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaties Implementation Act in the United States says "( a ), unless authorized by the owners of copyright in the sound recording or [...] in the musical works embodied therein, neither the owner of a particular phonorecord [...] may, for the purposes of direct or indirect commercial advantage, dispose of, or authorize the disposal of, the possession of that phonorecord [...] by rental, lease, or lending, or by any other act or practice in the nature of rental, lease, or lending.

Copyright law has been amended time and time again since the inception of the law to extend the length of this fixed period where the work is exclusively controlled by the copyright holder.

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.

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.

For example, in English law the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 provides that if a copyrighted work is made by an employee in the course of that employment, the copyright is automatically owned by the employer which would be a " Work for Hire.

", 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 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 ).

For a work to be considered pirated, its illegitimate use must have occurred in a nation that has domestic copyright laws and / or adheres to a bilateral treaty or established international convention such as the Berne Convention or WIPO Copyright Treaty.

* Copyright Clearance Center, a U. S. copyright collection society

' Question Copyright artist-in-residence Nina Paley advocates Copyheart, a sentence intended to replace the usual copyright declaration on a work: '♡ 2010 by Author / Artist.

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 ).

Section 30 ( 1 ) of the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 ( apparently in transposition of Article 5 ( 3 )( d ) of the EU Copyright Directive on " quotations ") allows " fair dealing " with a copyright work for the purpose of criticism or review, provided that it is accompanied by a sufficient acknowledgement.

Despite a period of instability known as the Battle of the Booksellers when the initial copyright terms under the Statute began to expire, the Statute of Anne remained in force until the Copyright Act 1842 repealed it.

The Engraving Copyright Act 1734 extended copyright to cover engravings, statutes in 1789 and 1792 involved cloth, sculptures were copyrighted in 1914 and the performance of plays and music were covered by copyright in 1833 and 1842 respectively.

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 ".