Copyrighting a book is in most instances not a difficult matter, but the present United States laws are so complicated and inconsistent that an inexperienced author may readily fall into errors of one kind or another.

In a modern publishing house, the routine work of complying with the provisions of the copyright laws is usually in the hands of one clerk, who is responsible for the preparation and filing of the necessary documents at the proper time and for keeping a complete record of all that he does. Experience soon brings such a clerk a really valuable knowledge of the law, but as many questions of vital importance arise from time to time, it is customary for one of the most responsible men in the concern, generally a member of the firm or an officer in the corporation, to exercise a general supervision of all copyright matters.

When a book is ready to be sent to the bindery, the manufacturing department will generally order a certain number of copies to be finished in advance of the rest of the edition. Some of these will be for the travelling salesman's use, some for the publicity department, and at least two for copyright purposes. With the copies delivered to the copyright clerk, the manufacturing department will send one or two separate title-pages, either torn from the printed sheets or taken from the early proofs made by the printer. With these in hand and with information from the selling department as to the day when the book is to be published, the clerk in charge will then take the first step toward copyrighting it. This is the filing of the claim for copyright and of the title of the book.

The Copyright Office in the Library of Congress at Washington supplies free upon request application blanks, and one of these must be carefully filled in. The information called for by this blank is as follows: the amount of the fees enclosed, whether a sealed copy of the record, or certificate as it is called, is desired, whether the volume is to be classed as a book, periodical, or dramatic composition, an abbreviated title of the book, the name of the author, or proprietor, the name and address of the applicant, the name of the country where the book was printed, whether the applicant is the author, or (having an assignment from the author) the proprietor, the name of the country of which the author is a citizen, or subject, and whether the whole or a part of the book is sought to be copyrighted.

There is a blank page in the form where the print or proof of the title-page must be pasted. If neither of these is available at the time, it is customary to use a typewritten title-page, but as the law distinctly calls for a "printed" title and as the courts have not decided whether typewriting is printing within the intention of the law, it is best to follow the exact letter of the law.

The fee for filing the application or claim for copyright is fifty cents if the author is a citizen or resident of the United States, or one dollar if he is a foreigner. If a copy of the record entered at the Copyright Office is desired, an additional fifty cents is required. The fees, preferably in the form of a money-order, are enclosed in the envelope containing the claim, and the whole forwarded, postage prepaid, to the Register of Copyrights at the Library of Congress.

Upon receiving these, the Copyright Office will acknowledge the receipt of the fees and make a record of the claim and of the title in books provided for the purpose. The law specifies that this record shall be in the following words:—

"Library of Congress, to wit: Be it remembered that on the___day of________190________________ of_________has deposited in this Office the title of a BOOK, the title of which is in the following words, to wit:____________, the right whereof_______ claims as author and proprietor in conformity with the laws of the United States respecting copyrights. ______________Librarian of Congress."It is generally the custom to obtain a copy of this record, which, if the fee is enclosed, is sent to the claimant as soon after the receipt of the application as it can be made out in the regular course of the business of the Copyright Office. This copy is signed by the Register of Copyrights and is sealed with the official seal of the Library of Congress. The period of protection under an original claim is twenty-eight years.

It is important to remember that the application and the title are required by law to be delivered to the Register of Copyrights "on or before the day of publication in this or any other country." If delayed until after that day, the book cannot have the protection of the copyright law.

Prior to 1891 none but citizens or residents of the United States could obtain copyright, but in July of that year the privilege was extended to the citizens, or subjects, of such other countries as grant to the citizens of the United States the same copyright privileges which they afford to their own countrymen. At the present time these privileged countries are Belgium, France, Great Britain and her possessions, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Portugal, Spain, Mexico, Chile, Costa Rica, the Netherlands (Holland) and her possessions, Cuba, China, and Norway.

The law also requires that a book desired to be copyrighted in the United States must be printed in this country. It is, therefore, not possible to copyright a book which has been put into type and electrotyped in England and sent here for the presswork and binding. Copies of a book manufactured in this country may, however, be sent to England and copyrighted there.

The second step is to send two copies of the printed book for deposit in the Copyright Office, and until this has been done, the copyright is incomplete. These copies, like the title, must be delivered on or before the day of publication.

A printed receipt-form for books to be deposited is supplied by the Copyright Office, and it is the usual practice for the sender to fill in his address, and the names of the book and of the author, so that when the books are received, the Register of Copyrights needs only to date and sign the receipt-form and return it to the sender. This receipt-form should be enclosed with the books when they are forwarded. The package must be plainly addressed (the Copyright Office furnishes printed labels if desired) and sent, carriage prepaid, through the mail.

It not infrequently happens that publication must be made before the two copies of a book can reach Washington. In such cases the copyright clerk may take the books to the nearest post-office and obtain from the postmaster a dated receipt for them which is equivalent to delivery to the Copyright Office. The package is not finally wrapped until the postmaster has examined it.When these steps have been properly taken, and the certificate, or sealed copy, of the record and the receipt for the two copies have been received, the copyright is secure so far as our laws can render it. It should be borne in mind that the Copyright Office does not grant a copyright in a manner similar to the granting of a patent right by the patent office. Its function is simply to record in a permanent place and in official form the claim made by the author, or by the proprietor, of that right. When a book is "pirated" and the offender sued, it must first be established by the records that the provisions of the law have been complied with fully and correctly. In this way a copyright is always subject to review by the courts.

Every copy of a book for which copyright has been claimed must have a formal notice to that effect, printed on its "title-page or on the page following." As prescribed by law, this notice must read either "Entered according to the Act of Congress in the year 1906 by A. B. in the Office of the Library of Congress," or simply, "Copyright, 1906, by A. B." The omission of such a notice from the book would make it impossible for its owner to prevent its being reprinted. There is a penalty of $100 for using the notice of copyright in an uncopyrighted book, and when the notice is used, there is a penalty of $25, if the two copies as required by law are not deposited. This latter penalty also applies in the case of failure to deposit one copy of a new edition differing from the former one, if a notice of copyright is used in the new edition.

In order to obtain a renewal of a copyright, the claim and the title must be filed on a form provided for the purpose with the Register of Copyrights "within six months before the expiration of the first term," which would be sometime between twenty-seven and one-half and twenty-eight years from the date of filing the original title. The copyright period runs from the date of filing the original claim, and not from the time of depositing the books, and great care should be taken to ascertain the date of the registration of the original title, and to compute the time so that the filing of the application for renewal will surely fall within the specified six months. The renewal period is fourteen years, and the fees are the same as in the case of the original application, but a certificate, or copy of the record, of the renewal claim must be taken and paid for by the claimant.

Only one copy of a book is required to be deposited to complete the claim for a renewal term of copyright. This copy also must be delivered within "six months before the expiration of the first term," and should be accompanied by a receipt as in the case of the original deposit. In order to complete the claim, a copy of the certificate must be published verbatim, within two months of the date of renewal for four weeks in one or more newspapers printed in the United States.In obtaining international copyright, publication on the same day here and abroad is necessary, and this is sometimes a cause of considerable inconvenience in actual practice. When a New York publisher wishes to copyright in England a novel which he is about to publish, he must prepare six special copies of the finished book, bind them in cloth, print the copyright notice on the back of the title-page, and the name and address of the London firm or the individual who is willing to act as the English publisher of the book, and forward the copies to that person. At the same time he will write to this agent, telling him of the shipment and requesting him to enter the book for copyright and publish it in England on or about such a date. He will, of course, allow sufficient time for the books to reach London, and he will carefully point out in his letter any American holidays which occur near the probable date of publication. Upon receiving the books, the London agent will cable the New York publisher the date on which he will publish the book, taking care to allow an interval of a day or two, because of a possible delay.

On the day agreed upon, the New York publisher proceeds to copyright and publish his book in this country in the usual manner, while the London agent does the same abroad, delivering to the British Museum one copy of the book, and to Stationer's Hall, for use in certain libraries, four copies. Both of them will on that day sell at least one or two copies which will constitute a legal publication.

It is the custom with many publishers to establish the publication day of all of their books, by displaying a few copies, or by actually selling one or more copies to some one. In the case of a very popular copyrighted book which it is desirable to have the retailers all over the country begin to sell on the same day, it is deemed safer to make this technical publication before any of the books are distributed through the trade. A record of the first sales entered in a publisher's sales-book in the course of business would effectually prevent any one from claiming in after years a right to reprint a book on the ground that the claim, title, and copies were not originally filed until after the book had been put upon the market.

Under a recent amendment in our law, an author of a book in a foreign language, who is a citizen of one of the foreign countries which allows to our citizens the same copyright privileges as are allowed to its own countrymen, is permitted to file in the Copyright Office within thirty days after its publication in a foreign country a copy of his book with a formal declaration that he is the author and that he intends to translate it or to print it in its original language and to apply for copyright in the United States. After doing this, he is allowed one year in which to complete his proposed translation or to print it in the original language and copyright it here.Before this statute was passed, two or more persons could translate a foreign book, and each could copyright his own translation. Every copy of a book for which such protection is desired under this law must bear a notice stating, "Published —— Nineteen Hundred and ——. Privilege of copyright in the United States reserved under the Act approved March 3, 1905, by A. B."

Only the author or his assignee (i.e. the proprietor) may secure copyright in a book. An author may transfer orally all or part of his rights before publication, but after publication it is necessary for him to make the assignment by some form of written instrument. In order to make it a valid assignment, the original instrument must be sent to be recorded in the office of the Librarian of Congress within sixty days after its execution. The fee for recording an assignment is one dollar. After the original document has been recorded, it is signed and sealed and returned to the sender, who should preserve it with the certificate.

It is a common practice to have in the contract between the author and his publisher a clause assigning to the publisher all of the author's rights for the "full term of copyright and for any and all renewals." The agreement, of course, includes other provisions such as for the payment of the usual royalties, accounting, etc. Having been made before publication such an assignment does not need to be recorded in the Copyright Office.The history of copyright is an extremely interesting subject, but it cannot be properly treated in the limits of this article. It may be mentioned, however, that the first copyright law was enacted by Parliament during Queen Anne's reign and is known as "8 Anne, c. 9." This statute provided that an author should have complete control of his literary productions during a first term of fourteen years after publication, and a renewal term of the same length, and provided penalties against piracy. A great many questions concerning this law arose from time to time in trials before various courts, but perhaps the chief one of interest was that of whether the limitation of the period during which it granted protection had destroyed the author's rights which had existed previously. For fifty years after the passage of the law, the decisions were that the right of ownership existed for all time as a right in common law unaffected by the statute, but in 1774 the highest English court held that while the rights of the author before the publication of his book remained unaffected, after publication he had no rights except during the period specified by the statute. This decision is still believed by many authorities to have been a wrong one, but it has been the basis for all subsequent copyright law in this country as well as in England. Therefore in the United States to-day, the right of ownership lies in the author until his work is published, but upon publication he has no rights except those given him by law, and these he can obtain only by a strict compliance with the requirements of the law. Any one who is sufficiently interested to read the first hundred pages of Drone's "Treatise on the Law of Property in Intellectual Productions" will be well repaid for the effort, and will obtain considerable light upon how the "right of copying," or printing, a book developed, why its duration is not unlimited, and why we must observe certain formalities in order to protect our literary work by it.[Back to Contents]