This blog post introduces the U.S. Copyright Office’s newest Learning Engine video, “History of Copyright,” which chronicles the history of copyright and the Copyright Office. The Office has released the video, and this blog post, timed with the 234th anniversary of the Congressional bill that eventually became the first federal copyright law.
This year’s Black History Month theme of Celebrating African Americans and the Arts recognizes the impact of Black artists and their creations as well as the significant role of copyright in creative industries. As part of this year’s celebration, we reflect on the legacy of Alice Walker and her book The Color Purple.
Every year on January 1, a new class of creative works enters the public domain in the United States. This year, a variety of works published in 1928, ranging from motion pictures to music to books, joined others in the public domain. The public domain has important historical and cultural benefits in the lifecycle of copyright. Here we highlight a selection of works entering the public domain in 2024.
This summer, the Copyright Office reached a new milestone in our modernization efforts: one million card catalog records have been digitized with searchable metadata and added to the Office’s Copyright Public Records System (CPRS) pilot. Learn more about CPRS, the Office’s digitization efforts, and historical registration application cards in this blog post.
During Native American Heritage Month, we celebrate the richness of Native American culture and its diverse array of creative expression. The U.S. Copyright Office’s records contain thousands of submissions from Native American creators in various artistic forms, including film, television, music, literature, and documents. Here we highlight the television series Reservation Dogs.
As we approach the eighteen-month mark for the Copyright Claims Board (CCB), we revisit a conversation with the CCB's three Copyright Claims Officers, David Carson, Monica McCabe, and Brad Newberg, from the one-year anniversary and share updated statistics about the Board's work between June 2022 and October 2023.
In June and July 2023, the Copyright Office hosted two public virtual webinars on the use of artificial intelligence technologies to generate works in creative fields. This blog post provides a brief recap of and links to the webinars, which focused on copyright registration guidance for AI-generated works and perspectives on how AI impacts copyright systems across the globe.
In April and May 2023, the Copyright Office hosted four public, virtual listening sessions on the use of artificial intelligence to generates works in creative fields. The listening sessions focused on four different categories of works: literary works, including print journalism and software; visual arts; audiovisual works, including video games; and music and sound recordings. This blog post provides a brief recap of the four listening sessions.