The information in this guide was compiled from a variety of sources. The library does not provide legal advice, opinion, nor counsel. Please contact the College Counsel Office for Siena-related legal advice and interpretation of the law.
Congress has the power, “…to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for a limited Time to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”
- U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clause 8
This legislation grants the creator (author, artist, composer, etc.) the exclusive right to control several aspects of their work for a limited period of time: the right to reproduce the work; the right to prepare derivative works based on the copyrighted work; the right to distribute copies of the work by sale (or other transfer of ownership), rental, lease, or lending; the right to perform a work publicly; and the right to display a work publicly. Section 106 of the law sets out these rights.
As with every rule, there are limitations and exceptions to copyright law.
Copyright protects works that are:
Works are protected the moment they become fixed. You are not required to put a copyright notice on the work, to register the work with the U.S. Copyright Office, or to publish the work to receive this protection. Despite this, registration is not a bad idea because it is required before a lawsuit can be filed in the event that someone infringes on a creator’s copyright. See Section 102 of copyright law for more details.
Copyright covers both published and unpublished works. Examples of copyrightable works include:
Copyright does not cover everything. Materials excluded from this legislation include ideas, titles, facts, processes, works prepared by the federal government, or works in the public domain. See Section 102 of copyright law for more information.
The fact that ideas are not protected by copyright law is one of the more difficult concepts to understand. A person can have an idea for a short story, but until that idea is fixed in print, it is not covered by copyright law. It is also for this reason that people can have two short stories about the same general topic or theme. Copyright protects only the expression of the idea and the order of the physical words on the page, not the idea itself.
Under current U.S. law, copyright lasts until 70 years after the death of the author. For works made for hire, the copyright term is either 95 years from the date of publication, or 120 years from the date of creation, whichever is shorter. After the copyright term expires, works pass into the public domain, meaning that anyone is free to reproduce, distribute, or otherwise reuse the work.
For works that had already secured statutory copyright protection before January 1, 1978, the 1976 Copyright Act retains the system in the previous copyright law—the Copyright Act of 1909. The 1909 law stated that the purpose of copyright is “not primarily for the benefit of the author, but primarily for the benefit of the public.” Although unpublished works were still held to be covered by common law, publication was necessary in order for a work to be covered by statutory law, and an author’s rights under statutory law were substantially different from what they were under common law. Under the 1909 law, there was no general protection of unpublished works. Omission of or serious error in a copyright notice or failure to deposit a copy in the Copyright Office resulted in loss or forfeit of copyright.
