United States copyright registrations, renewals, and other catalog entries since 1978 are published online at the

United States Copyright Office The United States Copyright Office (USCO), a part of the Library of Congress, is a United States government body that maintains records of copyright registration, including a copyright catalog. It is used by copyright title searchers who are ...

website. Entries prior to 1978 are not published in the online catalog. Copyright registrations and renewals after 1890 were formerly published in semi-annual softcover catalogs called The Catalog of Copyright Entries (CCE) or Copyright Catalog, or were published in

microfiche Microforms are scaled-down reproductions of documents, typically either films or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the original document size. F ...

Publication history and format

The Copyright Office published the Catalog of Copyright Entries in print format from 1891 through 1978. These volumes may often be available at federal depository libraries. From 1979 through 1982, the CCE was issued in microfiche format. The catalog was divided into parts according to the classes of works registered. Each CCE segment covered all registrations made during a particular period of time. Renewal registrations made from 1979 through 1982 are found in section 8 of the catalog. Renewals prior to that time were generally listed at the end of the volume containing the class of work to which they pertained. Effective with registrations made since 1982, the only way to see the CCE is by using the Internet to access the Copyright Office automated catalog. The automated catalog contains entries from 1978 forward. To access the catalog, go to copyright.gov.

Nature of catalog entries and access to copies of documents

The Catalog of Copyright Entries, the Copyright Card Catalog, and the online files are indexes, not reproductions of original documents. To view or copy the original documents yourself, you must visit the Copyright Office. Information such as registration numbers may be obtained from these files. Providing this information yourself rather than paying a fee to have the Office search for it will reduce the cost of obtaining records and copies from the Copyright Office.

Copyright categories

Part 1. BOOKS AND PAMPHLETS, INCLUDING SERIALS AND CONTRIBUTION TO PERIODICALS :Books :Books in foreign languages published abroad :Books in the English language first published abroad :Contributions to periodicals :Renewal registrations Part 2. PERIODICALS :Periodicals :Periodicals in foreign languages published abroad :Periodicals in the English language first published abroad :Renewal registrations Parts 3–4. DRAMAS AND WORKS PREPARED FOR ORAL DELIVERY :Lectures and other works prepared for oral delivery :Dramatic and dramatico-musical works published abroad :Published dramatic and dramatico-musical works :Unpublished dramatic and dramatico-musical works :Renewal registrations Part 5. MUSIC :Musical compositions published abroad :Musical compositions published in the United States :Unpublished music :Renewal registrations Part 6. MAPS AND ATLASES :Maps :Renewal registrations Parts 7–11A. WORKS OF ART, REPRODUCTIONS IN WORKS OF ART, SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL DRAWINGS, PHOTOGRAPHIC WORKS, PRINTS AND PICTORIAL ILLUSTRATIONS :Published works of art and designs for works of art :Unpublished works of art and designs for works of art :Reproductions of works of art published in the United States :Published drawings of plastic works of a scientific or technical character :Published photographs :Unpublished photographs :Prints and pictorial illustrations published in the United States :Prints and pictorial illustrations published abroad :Renewal registrations Part 11B. COMMERCIAL PRINTS AND LABELS :Commercials prints and labels :Renewal registrations Parts 12–13. MOTION PICTURES AND FILMSTRIPS :Published motion picture photoplays :Unpublished motion picture photoplays: :Published motion pictures other than photoplays :Unpublished motion pictures other than photoplays: :Renewal registrations

Cumulative copyright catalogs

For selected categories, the Library of Congress published hardcover books of copyright registrations covering ten or more years. These include *''Dramatic Compositions Copyrighted in the United States 1870 to 1916'', a two-volume set, published in 1918. Volume 1 (pages 1 – 1662) has alphabetized works with titles from A through N (consecutively numbered 1 – 33,176). Volume 2 (pages 1663–2830) has alphabetized works with titles from O through Z (consecutively numbered 33,177 – 56,066); page 2831 has titles that begin with numerals. Pages 2832–33 have Additions and Corrections. Page 2834 is blank. Pages 2835 – 3547 is an alphabetical index of authors, with each name followed by that author’s works.
''Catalog of Copyright Entries: Cumulative Series. Motion Pictures 1912–1939''
(51,112 films), published in 1951. L.C. card, 51-60018.
copy
*''Motion Pictures 1894–1912 Identified from the Records of the United States Copyright Office'' by Howard Lamarr Wells (8,506 films), published in 1953. (This is the only cumulative copyright catalog with an author credit.) L.C. card, 53-60033. *''Catalog of Copyright Entries: Cumulative Series. Motion Pictures 1940–1949'' (18,767 films and early TV programs), published in 1953. L.C. card, 53-60032. *''Catalog of Copyright Entries: Cumulative Series. Motion Pictures 1950–1959'' (27,310 films and TV programs), published in 1960. L.C. card, 53-60032. *''Catalog of Copyright Entries: Cumulative Series. Motion Pictures 1960–1969'' (34,277 films and TV programs), published in 1971. L.C. card, 53-60032.

Catalog reprints

All of the cumulative Copyright Catalogs listed above are out of print. However, the complete text of registrations and indexes in the four volumes of motion pictures from 1894 through 1959 have been reprinted in the ''

Film Superlist ''Film Superlist: Motion Pictures in the U.S. Public Domain'' is a series of reference books created by attorney Walter Hurst about the copyright status of films. Each ''Film Superlist'' volume contains the main text of the Cumulative Copyright ...

'' series. A number of entities have scanned all or some of the volumes of the CCE. The

Stanford Library The Stanford University Libraries (SUL), formerly known as "Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources" ("SULAIR"), is the library system of Stanford University in California. It encompasses more than 24 libraries in all. Sev ...

and the University of Pennsylvania library have each scanned a section of the records and put them into a database. At the University of Pennsylvania, they have scanned book and serials renewals, searchable by year at The Catalog of Copyright Entries. Stanford has also placed renewal records into a Copyright Renewals searchable database. More recently,

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

has indexed many volumes of the CCE into a searchable index, available at Searching Google's Scans of the Catalog of Copyright Entries. The

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

has similarly scanned and indexed the volumes of the CCE, as well as many other US Copyright Office works, and makes the works both searchable and viewable as scans by searching for the "collection:copyrightrecords" at Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine.

Criticism

Privacy

The Copyright Catalog has been criticized in that the public catalog includes

personally identifiable information Personal data, also known as personal information or personally identifiable information (PII), is any information related to an identifiable person. The abbreviation PII is widely accepted in the United States, but the phrase it abbreviates ha ...

like home addresses and phone numbers of artists; removing or replacing that data may be hard.

Notes

External links

Catalogues of Copyright Entries: full database
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University of Pennsylvania Libraries The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest- ...

Catalogues of Copyright Entries: 1924–1949
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"Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the U.S."
(chart on determining copyright status) by Peter B. Hirtle,

Cornell University Library The Cornell University Library is the library system of Cornell University. As of 2014, it holds over 8 million printed volumes and over a million ebooks. More than 90 percent of its current 120,000 Periodical literature, periodical titles are ...

{{USCopyrightActs Catalogues Publications of the United States government United States Copyright Office Copyright law literature Copyright law lists