Help:Copyright renewals

Under United States copyright law, works published in the United States between 1923 and 1963 only had a "first term" of copyright of 28 years. However, they were eligible for an additional "renewal term" if a renewal was filed in the 28th year of the first term. If the renewal was not filed, these works entered the public domain. If the renewal was filed, the work is still under copyright as the copyright period has since been extended to 95 years from the year of first publication.

It is therefore important for Wikisource to know the renewal status of any works published during these four decades. Potentially lots of works are in the public domain due to lack to renewal.

Renewal registration information is available from a variety of sources. These can be checked for evidence of renewal. If no renewal registration is found, the work can be assumed to be in the public domain.

How to check for renewals
Copyright renewals were registered by the United States Copyright Office. Records of renewals made up until 1977 (ie. for works published in 1923-1949) were published in the Catalog of Copyright Entries (or CCE), published twice a year. Scans are available in several places on the internet. Records of renewals made from 1978 onwards (ie. for works published in 1950-1963) are available online at the U. S. Copyright Office website. For 1978 renewals (ie. relating to 1950), it is recommended that both the CCE and the Copyright Office website be checked.

Renewals could be made by the author or, if dead, by their spouse, children or representative of the estate. In some cases the author of the work was not the owner of the copyright (for example, a work made for hire). An important case of the latter is a contribution to a periodical, such as a magazine or newspaper; in which case, the copyright could be renewed both by the author renewing the copyright on the individual work or by the publisher renewing the copyright on the issue of the periodical. Therefore, for works published in periodicals, the copyright status of both the work and the periodical need to be checked.

Who could file a renewal
There were only four classes of people who could normally file a renewal registration:
 * 1) The author, if living.
 * 2) The widow/widower and/or children of the author if the author had died.
 * 3) The author's executor, if the author left a will and there was no widow, widower or children.
 * 4) The author's next of kin, if the author did not leave a will and there was no widow, widower or children.

Four types of work could have a renewal registered by the owner of the copyright (that is, the legal owner but not the actual author of the work) at the time of renewal registration:
 * 1) Posthumous work, where there was no copyright assignment or contract during the author's lifetime.
 * 2) Periodical, cyclopedic or other composite works.
 * 3) Works copyrighted by a corporate body.
 * 4) Works for hire (where the work was made for an employer).

Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE)
Stanford and Rutgers Universities have databases of renewals for books only. Not included in these databases are periodicals, contributions to those periodicals, films, etc. However, the databases are easily searchable, which makes checking for book renewals a much simpler process.

Scans of the CCE are available via Pennsylvania University, Google Books, the Hathi Trust and other scan databases. The Pennsylvania site is especially useful as a starting point because it is arranged into years, has useful information and it links to the other sites. Google Books and the Project Gutenberg transcriptions are easier to search automatically but you risk missing something due to an uncorrected typo or OCR error.

Searching
To search for a renewal, you need to know the year in which the work was originally published.

While renewal was required in the 28th year after publication, you should also look in the 27th year. Just in case the records were published late, checking the 29th year is also useful. For example, for Book A, published in 1930, you should check the records for 1957 and 1958 (and maybe 1959).

Each year usually has two, six-monthly catalogs. The first covers January to June, the second covers July to December. Again, both need to be checked. The CCEs have a title index but the major details are listed under the author's name. Both lists are in alphabetical order.

Each CCE is split into sections, for example:
 * Part 1: Books, Pamphlets, Serials, and Contributions to Periodicals
 * Part 2: Periodicals
 * Parts 3–4: Drama and Works Prepared for Oral Delivery
 * etc...

For Wikisource, part 1 is the main section of interest, although others may need to be checked for some works. (Note that the parts varied over time, so the sections may be different in different years).

If the work cannot be found in any of the appropriate CCEs then it can be taken as "not renewed" and in the public domain. In this case, it is free to be added to Wikisource (or used in any other way).

Abbreviations
There are many abbreviations used within the CCE. Some of the most relevant are:


 * (A): Author(s).
 * (C): Child or children of the deceased author.
 * (E): Executor(s) of the author.
 * (NK): Next of kin of the deceased author.
 * (W): Widow of the author.
 * (Wr): Widower of the author.
 * (PCB): Proprietor of copyright in a work copyrighted by a corporate body otherwise than as assignee or licensee of the individual author.
 * (PCW): Proprietor of copyright in a composite work.
 * (PPW): Proprietor of copyright in a posthumous work.
 * (PWH): Proprietor of copyright in a work made for hire.

Examples
The following are all extracts from the CCE to show the appearance of renewal entries.

Copyright Office website
Records for 1978 onward (ie. renewals for 1950 to 1963 and new copyrights from 1978) can be found at the US Copyright Office.

Searching

 * 1) Click "Search the Catalog" to get to the Basic Search page.
 * 2) There are six types of search available (Title, Name, Keyword, Registration Number, Document Number, Command Keyword).  Notes about each one can be found at the bottom of the page.  Pick the most appropriate from the "search by" field and enter the search terms in the "search for" field.
 * 3) * NB: It is recommended that several different searches are performed to confirm the lack of a copyright. For instance, search for the title of the work and the name of the author.
 * 4) Begin search.
 * 5) The search results have five columns (#, varies based on search type, Full Title, Copyright Number, Date).
 * 6) * Renewal registrations have a Copyright Number that starts with "RE".
 * 7) More details can be seen by clicking on either the number (first column) or the full title (third column).

Examples
Click the images to see larger versions.

Contributions to periodicals
This covers newspaper articles, stories published in magazines and so forth, as well as collective works such as encyclopaedia. In these cases, it is likely that the contract signed between the author and the publisher gave the publisher the right to the work. If the copyright on an issue of a periodical was renewed it probably means that every piece published in that issue was covered by this renewal as well. Unless it can be proved otherwise, we must assume that this is the case.

If the original author died before the renewal year, the contract between them and the publisher ended. Therefore the publisher no longer owned the copyright and was not eligible to register a renewal.

The author or other suitable people could also register a renewal of the copyright on their own works published in periodicals or collective works.

Examples
Periodical renewals are similar to the individual work renewals.

Template
Works that are in the public domain due to the lack of a copyright renewal registration should be tagged with the PD-US-no-renewal template.

Note that this template has additional parameters to record the year of publication and the year of the author's death. For example,  for a work published in 1936 by an author who died in 1950 for which there was no renewal registration. This helps other uses verify the lack of renewal and is necessary for users outside the United States whose copyright laws may differ from that of the United States. Please include either or both additional parameters where possible.

For more information, see the template documentation.

Useful resources

 * Stanford Copyright Renewal Database (books only)
 * Pennsylvania copyright records scans (all scans)
 * Direct links to scans by type:
 * /Books/ (and pamphlets)
 * /Periodicals/
 * /Films/
 * U. S. Copyright Office (1978+ records)
 * Google's scans of the Catalog of Copyright Entries (all scans)