United States Code/Title 17/1976-10-18/Chapter 1/Sections 24 to 26

by the United States Government

§ 24—Duration, renewal and extension

The copyright secured by this title shall endure for twenty-eight years from the date of first publication, whether the copyrighted work bears the author's true name or is published anonymously or under an assumed name: Provided, That in the case of any posthumous work or of any periodical, cyclopedic, or other composite work upon which the copyright was originally secured by the proprietor thereof, or of any work copyrighted by a corporate body (otherwise than as assignee or licensee of the individual author) or by an employer for whom such work is made for hire, the proprietor of such copyright shall be entitled to a renewal and extension of the copyright in such work for the further term of twenty-eight years when application for such renewal and extension shall have been made to the copyright office and duly registered therein within one year prior to the expiration of the original term of copyright: And provided further, That in the case of any other copyrighted work, including a contribution by an individual author to a periodical or to a cyclopedic or other composite work, the author of such work, if still living, or the widow, widower, or children of the author, if the author be not living, or if such author, widow, widower or children be not living, then the author's executors, or in the absence of a will, his next of kin shall be entitled to a renewal and extension of the copyright in such work for a further term of twenty-eight years when application for such renewal and extension shall have been made to the copyright office and duly registered therein within one year prior to the expiration of the original term of copyright: And provided further, That in default of the registration of such application for renewal and extension, the copyright in any work shall determine at the expiration of twenty-eight years from first publication.

§ 25—Renewal of copyrights registered in Patent Office under repealed law

Subsisting copyrights originally registered in the Patent Office prior to July 1, 1940, under section 3 of the act of June 18, 1874, shall be subject to renewal in behalf of the proprietor upon application made to the Register of Copyrights within one year prior to the expiration of the original term of twenty-eight years.

§ 26—Terms defined

In the interpretation and construction of this title "the date of publication" shall in the case of a work of which copies are reproduced for sale or distribution be held to be the earliest date when copies of the first authorized edition were placed on sale, sold, or publicly distributed by the proprietor of the copyright or under his authority, and the word "author" shall include an employer in the case of works made for hire.

For the purposes of this section and sections 10, 11, 13, 14, 21, 101, 106, 109, 209, 215, but not for any other purpose, a reproduction of a work described in subsection 5(n) shall be considered to be a copy thereof. "Sound recordings" are works that result from the fixation of a series of musical, spoken, or other sounds, but not including the sounds accompanying a motion picture. "Reproductions of sound recordings" are material objects in which sounds other than those accompanying a motion picture are fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the sounds can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device, and include the "parts of instruments serving to reproduce mechanically the musical work", "mechanical reproductions", and "interchangeable parts, such as discs or tapes for use in mechanical music-producing machines" referred to in sections 1(e) and 101(e) of this title.

Amendment history

Sections 24 to 26 were added by the Act of July 30, 1947 (c. 391, 61 Stat. 652) which codified the Copyright Act of 1909 (Mar. 4, 1909, 35 Stat. 1075). Section 26 was amended by Public Law 92-140 (Oct. 15, 1971, 85 Stat. 391), § 1(e). Sections 24 to 26 were repealed by the Copyright Act of 1976 (Pub. L. 94-553, Oct. 19, 1976, 90 Stat. 2541) with effect from January 1, 1978.

Other statutory provisions

Apart from sections 24 and 25, Congress enacted nine interim extensions of the renewal term which affected copyrights obtained between September 19, 1906, and December 31, 1918:

• Pub. L. 87-668, 76 Stat. 555 (extending copyrights from September 19, 1962, to December 31, 1965)
• Pub. L. 89-142, 79 Stat. 581 (extending copyrights to December 31, 1967)
• Pub. L. 90-141, 81 Stat. 464 (extending copyrights to December 31, 1968)
• Pub. L. 90-416, 82 Stat. 397 (extending copyrights to December 31, 1969)
• Pub. L. 91-147, 83 Stat. 360 (extending copyrights to December 31, 1970)
• Pub. L. 91-555, 84 Stat. 1441 (extending copyrights to December 31, 1971)
• Pub. L. 92-170, 85 Stat. 490 (extending copyrights to December 31, 1972)
• Pub. L. 92-566, 86 Stat. 1181 (extending copyrights to December 31, 1974)
• Pub. L. 93-573, 88 Stat. 1873 (extending copyrights to December 31, 1976)

Subsection 304(b), as added by the Copyright Act of 1976, extended these copyrights to seventy-five years from the date on which they were obtained:

"(b) The duration of any copyright, the renewal term of which is subsisting at any time between December 31, 1976, and December 31, 1977, inclusive, or for which renewal registration is made between December 31, 1976, and December 31, 1977, inclusive, is extended to endure for a term of seventy-five years from the date copyright was originally secured."

This provision, unlike most of the Copyright Act of 1976, was effective from October 19, 1976 (sec. 102). Subsection 304(b) was replaced by the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act with effect from October 27, 1998: by that time, all affected copyrights had expired.