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The five remaining States granted copyright for single terms of fourteen, twenty and twenty one years, with no right of renewal. Prior to the passage of the United States Constitution, several states passed their own copyright laws between 1783 and 1787, the first being Connecticut.
The copyright law of the United States grants monopoly protection for "original works of authorship". [ 1][ 2] With the stated purpose to promote art and culture, copyright law assigns a set of exclusive rights to authors: to make and sell copies of their works, to create derivative works, and to perform or display their works publicly.
Today national copyright laws have been standardised to some extent through international and regional agreements such as the Berne Convention and the European copyright directives. Although there are consistencies among nations' copyright laws, each jurisdiction has separate and distinct laws and regulations about copyright.
During the first session of the 1st United States Congress in 1789, the House of Representatives considered enacting a copyright law. The historian Davit Ramsay petitioned Congress seeking to restrict the publication of his History of the American Revolution on April 15.
In the past, a work would enter the public domain in the United States if it was released without a copyright notice. This was true prior to March 1, 1989, but is no longer the case. Any work (of certain, enumerated types) now receives copyright as soon as it is fixed in a tangible medium.
Previous copyright law set the duration of copyright protection at 28 years with a possibility of a 28 year extension, for a total maximum term of 56 years. The 1976 Act, however, substantially increased the term of protection. Section 302 of the Act extended protection to "a term consisting of the life of the author and fifty years after the ...
The clause, which is the basis of copyright and patent laws in the United States, states that: [2] [the United States Congress shall have power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
This law lengthened duration copyright protection and again expanded the types of works that covered under federal copyright protection, and with amendments made since then, is the current copyright law in effect.