The Authors Guild along with the Songwriters Guild of America filed a joint statement Friday with the U.S. Copyright Office asking that Congress act to eliminate what the two groups see as a potential “gap” in termination rights granted under the Copyright Act. According to the filing, if the gap is not addressed as many as 100,000 creators may not be able to exercise termination rights they thought had effectively been granted to them under the law in 1976.
“The potential problem is serious and pressing--the time to file thirty-five year termination notices for post-1978 works commences in 2011--but it’s a technical problem that can be resolved with a straightforward legislative clarification,” explained Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. In establishing termination rights for creators--allowing them to end transfers of their copyrights to publishers after a set number of years--Congress established rules for terminations for both pre- and post-1978 works. However, because of a quirk in the drafting of the law, there may be an inadvertent gap for works governed by pre-1978 contracts that were not published or registered for copyright until 1978 or later.
There are various scenarios in which confusion may arise under the law as currently written. For example, nearly all books published in 1978 and most books published in 1979 were subject to pre-1978 contracts and therefore could fall within the suspected gap. John Irving’s The World According to Garp, published in 1978, and Beverly Cleary’s Ramona and Her Mother and Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, both published in 1979, are all likely to be in this category. In general, Aiken noted the termination right gives authors the power to renegotiate their contracts in cases where a book has a commercial life far longer than expected. He said the Congress clearly intended to grant this right to all authors and to ensure that happens Congress needs to pass a new provision clarifying its intention. Aiken said he wasn’t aware of any party that opposes such a fix, but that action needs to be taken to prevent authors and others from falling into the gap.
