Administrative Law

Retraction: More messiness with copyright duration of foreign works

By Peter

A few days ago I posted on the impact that the establishment of copyright relations with the United States after 1998 could have on the term of restored copyright for those works.  My posting was prompted by an example in Stephen Fishman's excellent new treatise, "Copyright and the Public Domain."  After reading an example, I concluded that a work published abroad before 1923 could still be protected by copyright because they would get a 95 year copyright term. 

Fortunately in the world of social networking there are lots of people out there who are smarter than I am.  In the comments on the post, Lupo questioned my reasoning, and of course he is right.  Works published before 1923 got at most a 75 year term of restored copyright regardless of when they established copyright relations with the US.  They are all in the public domain.  Works published after 1922 in the countries listed in my previous post would receive a 95 year term of copyright.  So for example, a 1923 work published in Nigeria, which established copyright relations with the US in 1999, would be protected by copyright through 2018 [corrected from 2038].  My deep thanks go to Lupo for challenging me.

I still have to update the copyright chart to properly account for the difference between a 75 year term in 1996 and a 95 year term in 1998 - but that is a different issue than the one I raised before.

Full post as published by LibraryLaw Blog on May 14, 2009 (boomark / email).