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Category: historical

Celebratory photos of Black families and copyrightable materials like music and books

A Family of Creative Works in Celebration of Black History Month

Posted by: Holland Gormley

The following is a guest post by Annette James, a program coordinator at the U.S. Copyright Office. As I reflect upon the 2021 Black History Month theme, The Black Family: Representation, Identity, and Diversity, the word family captures a wealth of emotions. It calls up memories of childhood and retrospection on lessons learned. It brings …

Photo of Sojourner Truth's carte de visite

Sojourner Truth and the Power of Copyright Registration

Posted by: Holland Gormley

The following is a guest post by Marilyn Creswell, 2020 Librarian-in-Residence for the U.S. Copyright Office. Sojourner Truth was a preacher, abolitionist, and suffragist. A lesser known fact is that she was also a copyright innovator. Truth was born in New York around 1797. Enslaved during her youth and early adulthood, she eventually gained freedom …

Black and white photo of a vampire from the film, Nosferatu

Copyright Horror Stories

Posted by: Steve Andreadis

The following is a guest post by Mary Daniel, summer 2020 law clerk in the Office of Policy and International Affairs. Mary is a third year at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. The Halloween season is the time of year for horror movies and scary stories. However, sometimes it’s the horror …

Promoting Progress: Celebrating the Constitution’s Intellectual Property Clause

Posted by: Alison Hall

Today is Constitution Day, which is a day of great celebration in copyright. In addition to all of the other treasures in the Constitution, of which there are many, our country's founding document includes the foundation for U.S. copyright law. In article 1, section 8, clause 8, the Constitution states that Congress has the power to enact laws to "promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." And Congress obliged, passing the first federal copyright law in 1790, updating it throughout the years to address the changing times.

Photographic illustration combining image of facade of court, text of Constitution and Copyright Office 150th anniversary graphics

Historic Court Cases That Helped Shape Scope of Copyright Protections

Posted by: Anandashankar Mazumdar

As the Copyright Office celebrates its 150th birthday, we can look back more than 240 years through the history of copyright protections in the United States to see how the law has changed in response to changing technologies and economics. The authors of the U.S. Constitution believed that copyright was important enough to explicitly grant …