COPYRIGHT LAW: PUBLISHING ART AND THE PUBLIC DOMAIN

MEMBERS’ LOUNGE CASE

COPYRIGHT LAW: PUBLISHING ART AND THE PUBLIC DOMAIN

 

Throughout the world today, new works of authorship, including books and artworks, generally enjoy a uniform term of copyright protection that extends from date of creation until, typically, 70 years after the author dies.

 

But this was not always so, particularly in the United States. Prior to the adoption of the Copyright Act of 1976, the term of copyright protection in the United States was based on when and how the artwork was published, as opposed to when the work was created or when the artist died.

 

Even today, artworks created prior to 1978 have a copyright term that depends on their publication history, i.e. when images of the artworks appeared in books, periodicals, prints, or other publicly-available copies. Thus, to determine whether an artwork older than 30 years is still protected under United States copyright law, it is often necessary to visit an art library to research when and how images of the artwork have been published.

 

For example, 28 years after an artwork was first published in a book or magazine, the artist – not the publisher – was required to file a formal application with the United States Copyright Office to “renew” the copyright. The artworks illustrated in these publications are now in the public domain in the United States today because the artist did not renew the copyright 28 years after the books were first published.

 

To learn more about this topic, visit the exhibition Copyright Law: Publishing Artwork and the Public Domain, on view in the Ryerson Library. Using artworks from the collection of The Art Institute of Chicago, the exhibition highlights several of the unique publication-based rules of United States copyright law.

( courtesy of Ryerson library staff )