Determining the copyright status of works created in the United States after 31 December 1922 requires a complex process that takes into consideration when the work was created; whether and how the work was published; whether a notice was required and, if so, whether one was correctly affixed; and, if the work was subject to renewal requirements, whether it was correctly renewed by the copyright holder or subject to automatic renewal (Mannapperuma et al., 2014). For works published between 1923 and 1963, it is particularly difficult to determine the copyright status because the copyright holder may have filed a renewal notice with the US Copyright Office.
Created and hosted by Stanford University Libraries, the Copyright Renewal Database combines machine-readable renewal announcements published by the Copyright Office between 1950 and 1977 with content from the Office's electronic records to provide a searchable database of copyright renewal notices for books. Not included are renewals for non-book registrations, which may include serials, dramatic works, sound recordings and more.
The records include the title, author, date of registration and renewal and the entity responsible for renewal. Information about the assignment of rights is not available in this resource; therefore, research about current rights holders must be conducted following the instructions of the Copyright Office. However, this tool will assist users in confirming that a work was correctly registered and may still be protected by copyright. In some cases, users must conduct additional research, for example if the registration was eligible for renewal prior to 1950.
The website clearly describes the limitation of the database's content, as well as the process used to verify accuracy. While the website links to additional resources, these sources are presented without context and some of the links are outdated. The primary value of this resource is in the data itself. To facilitate additional usage of the data, the About the Collection section includes a link to download the entirety of the database for reuse in other systems. By releasing the data, along with information about how it was created and verified, the Copyright Renewal Database enables others to easily repurpose this content. Overall, this project is an excellent example of an institution providing substantially improved access to a historical government information product that is still in use today.
