Page:The librarian's copyright companion, by James S. Heller, Paul Hellyer, Benjamin J. Keele, 2012.djvu/33

Chapter One. General Principles sixty-seven years if the renewal option is exercised; if not, the work enters the public domain. The crucial question for works published between 1923 and 1978 is whether all formalities—copyright notice, registration, and renewal—were fulfilled. Looking for a copyright notice is easy; just examine the work to see if there is a copyright notice anywhere.
 * A work published between 1964 and 1977 is protected, if it had a copyright notice, for ninety-five years from the date of publication.
 * A work created before 1978 but not published by 1978 is protected for the author’s life plus seventy years, unless the work was published between 1978 and 2002—in which case the work is protected for the author’s life plus seventy years or through 2047, whichever is greater.

Finding out if a work was registered or renewed is a bit trickier. For works published between 1923 and 1963, you need to check if the work was renewed, because if it was registered but not renewed, the copyright has expired. If the work was published in 1964 or later and has a copyright notice, it is going to be under copyright protection for quite some time.

Researching copyright renewals can be challenging, but some useful tools are available. The Copyright Office published the Catalog of Copyright Entries, a set of books containing copyright registrations and renewals. Many of these volumes have been digitized and are available on several web sites. Search these databases by title and author to see if the copyright of the work you are interested in was renewed. The databases tend to each have parts of the entire set (for instance, all the book renewals for a certain period), so pay attention to their scope.

If you don’t find evidence of the copyright being renewed, then the copyright most likely expired. We say most likely because digitized records are still incomplete and works by foreign authors had their copyrights restored by Congress to comply with the Berne Convention. Copyright Office Circular 22 has some advice and details how to request a search of the Copyright Office’s records. This is an expensive option, so it should be a last resort.