1909 Copyright Act

The 1909 Copyright Act was a landmark statute in United States statutory copyright law. The Act was superseded by the 1976 Copyright Act, but it remains effective for copyrighted works created before the 1976 Act went into effect on January 1, 1978. It allowed for works to be copyrighted for a period of 28 years from the date of publication, renewable for a second 28-year term.

Under the 1909 Act, federal statutory copyright protection attached to original works only when those works were 1) published and 2) had a notice of copyright affixed. Thus, state copyright law governed protection for unpublished works, but published works, whether containing a notice of copyright or not, were governed exclusively by federal law.

If no notice of copyright was affixed to a work and the work was "published" in a legal sense, the 1909 Act provided no copyright protection and the work became part of the public domain. The 1976 Act changed this result, providing that copyright protection attaches to works that are original and fixed in a tangible medium of expression, regardless of publication or affixation of notice.