Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act

Citation: Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension and Fairness in Music Licensing Act, Pub. L. No. 105-298 (1998).

Overview
The duration of copyright is one of the major parameters for establishing the amount of protection accorded to authors and other owners of copyright. It is also the principal dividing line between the property rights of such owners and the public domain &mdash; that is, the domain of unprotected works which are available to the public for unrestricted, uncompensated use. Under the U.S. Constitution, Art. I, §8, cl. 8, Congress is authorized to grant copyright protection only for "limited Times."

Title I of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and Fairness in Music Licensing Act extended copyright protection for twenty (20) years. The added 20-year period applies retroactively to all works in which copyright subsists.

Prior to the Act, copyright generally endured for a fixed term of 75 years from publication, of for the life of the author plus 50 years after the author's death. Specifically, for post-1977 works (i.e., works that secured copyright on or after January 1, 1978), the term for personal works (i.e., works created by known authors who are not employees of another person or entity) was the life of the author plus 50 years after death. For impersonal works copyrighted on or after January 1, 1978, the term was the shorter of 75 years from publication or 100 years from creation. For pre-1978 copyrighted works, the term was a fixed period of 75 years, computed from the date copyright was secured either by publication with notice of copyright or by registration as an unpublished work with the Copyright Office. If a personal work was created jointly by two or more authors, the post-1977 term was measured by the life of the last surviving author.

These former terms of copyright had been established by the last general revision of the copyright law -- the 1976 Copyright Act -- which became effective on January 1, 1978. Before that date, the copyright term under the 1909 Copyright Act was a fixed period of years, consisting of a 28-year original term which could be renewed for an additional 28 years. For various reasons, including fairness and the wish to avoid possible impairment of contract, Congress changed the basis for computing the copyright term under the 1976 Act only for post-1977 works. Congress adopted the "life-plus'50" basis for works copyrighted on or after January 1, 1978, and retained the fixed period of copyright for pre-1978 works. However, to balance the two methods of computing copyright terms, Congress added a 19-year period to the maximum 56-year period that otherwise would have applied to pre-1978 works; the resulting term being a total of 75 years.