Analysis of Public Law 105-298 (10/27/98)

The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extention Act

Breaths new life into copyrights. Works published in 1925 will NOT fall into public domain in year 2000 as expected. Is this a Y2K bug? No- now the previous term limits of unexpired works have been extended another 20 years.

• 75 years from publication will now become 95 years for pre-1978 works
• "life plus 50" years will become "life plus 70" years
• corporate works will be protected to 95 years from publication/120 year from creation.
• and a number of other miscelleneous term extentions.

Copyright protection terms are on a calendar year basis. A pre-1978 work is considered to be protected for the ENTIRE year that it is first published. A work registered with a 1924 date is protected that year and for 74 subsequent full years, and falls into public domain January 1, 1999. Similarly when computing death benefits, the composer is considered alive for the entire year of death. A foreign author that dies in 1948 will have protection for 50 full subsequent years, then works will pass into public domain January 1, 1999 (this case practical for URAA restoration cases only). Unpublished US works continues to be protected at least until year 2002.

The effective date of the legislation is January 27, 1999. Both of the examples above will fall into public domain in 1999. See a new "simplified" chart of current classes of copyright status. Up coming will be a 20 year hiatus of public domain offerings from US based registrations, although foreign based rights including URAA restoration terms will continue to expire.

Sonny Bono does not effect the unpublished materials of authors that died before 1933, their public domain "drop dead" date remains January 1, 2003. See Publish or Perish.

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