Copyright Law

The copyright laws are codified in Title 17 of the U.S. Code.

There are numerous online sources to access Title 17. Among them are:

• Lexis - U.S.C.S.

• Westlaw - U.S.C.A.

• Bloomberg Law

• Cornell's LII - Legal Information Institute

• FindLaw

• Office of Law Revision Counsel - U.S.C.

• FDsys from GPO - the Government Printing Office

• The entire Title 17 as one single document can be downloaded from CALI, and from the Copyright Office.

A listing of pending copyright legislation from the latest congressional session can be accessed from the copyright office. Prior bills, to the 105th Congress (1997), can be found in this archive.

Tracking pending legislation can be accomplished by setting up an alert. Alerts are provided by several free-to-use sites, and by all the law library provided for-pay legal databases.

You'll need to have a bill or statute number, or run your alert using only keywords. You can find the Federal bill number of pending legislation with the Bill Tracking tool reached by selecting "Statutes and Rules" from the home screen. On the right you'll see a column of Tools and Resources. "Bill Tracking" will be one option.Select Federal/US Congress and run your search.

From "Practice Areas > Intellectual Property, there is also a Proposed and Enacted Legislation link that limits the search to IP sources. The link is also in the main IP page.

Once you have the bill or statute number, set a WestClip Alert by clicking on the Alert icon in the upper right of the screen, "Create an Alert > WestClip" then brings up a form. At Step 2: ADD Proposed and Enacted Legislation, > Federal > then click on the "ADD" icons for both "U.S. Public Laws" and "Congressional Bills". The "ADD" icon should now display a green check mark. Continue filling out the form by adding the bill number and/or any keywords you desire. At the last screen you may wish to uncheck the "Alert even if there are no results" check box.

In Lexis you can Browse to the Bill Tracking Report - Current Congress to conduct your initial search. With the bill number or keyword, frame the search query language in final form, run that search to make sure it will work in the future, and follow the instructions in the Help documents to set up the alert. Remember to check the box to be notified only if/when changes occur.

The procedure to create a search alert procedure in Bloomberg is explained in this library guide page.

•Congress.gov

Current legislation and bill status can be found at the official Congress.gov site. The advanced search link allows you to filter and search legislation from prior congresses.

The following open access sites provide alerts on legislation, sometimes via an RSS feed. An E-mail registration may be required. No recommendation or endorsement is intended by their inclusion here.

• Scout from the Sunlight foundation.

• GovTrack.us

• OpenCongress

Almost all copyright related regulations concern the Copyright Office and the Copyright Royalty Board. The regulations of those two organizations are contained in Title 37 of the CFR, which also contains the regulations governing the USPTO.

Title 37 of the CFR can be accessed from various sources, including:

• Westlaw 

• LexisAdvance

• Bloomberg Law

• HeinOnline

• e-CFR from the GPO

Rules, proposed rules and other notices published in the Federal Register dating back to 1993 are posted here by the Copyright Office.

Existing regulations can be tracked by using the Alerts procedure outlined in the box for legislation to the left, but using the C.F.R. as the source. Proposed and pending regulations are searched via the Federal Register.

In Lexis the initial search would be made in:
By Category > Administrative Codes and Regulations.

The C.F.R. and Federal Register are both part of that category. The final search terms and Alerts procedure would be identical to that for legislation.

Westlaw has separate C.F.R. and Federal Register links. Again, after the keyword terms are finalized the alert can be set up.

The Library of Congress provides this useful guide:
How to Trace Federal Regulations.

Administrative rules and regulations are initially published in the Federal Register. The Federal Register provides RSS feeds. You can have them act as alerts. Navigate to and subscribe to the RSS feeds for the Patent and Trademark Office, or subscribe to an alert for a topic, for example, "inventions and patents". The Federal Register site contains additional useful resources. A related site, Regulations.gov, allows you to comment on proposed rules, and also permits searching regulations.

An online tutorial on using the Federal Register is available here.

The following open access site allows you to subscribe to an RSS feed for the USPTO. An E-mail registration may be required. No recommendation or endorsement is intended by its inclusion here.

• Justia Regulations Tracker

The link below opens up the latest edition of a thorough report from the Congressional Research Service.