By JUDITH NIERMAN
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and its implementing legislation provided for the restoration of copyright for certain works that were in the public domain in the United States. The Copyright Office has now published a list of those works whose copyright has been restored.
Under NAFTA, copyright could be restored for motion pictures, including television programs, that were first "fixed," or published, in Mexico or Canada and first published without notice anywhere between Jan. 1, 1978, and March 1, 1989. The motion picture or an underlying work embodied in the motion picture (such as a song) could have copyright protection restored if the owners of qualifying works filed with the Copyright Office a statement of intent to restore copyright protection. Copyright restoration was not automatic but was dependent on the filing of a statement of intent between Jan. 1, 1994, and Dec. 31, 1994.
The Office was then obliged to publish in the Federal Register (60 FR 8252) the list of works for which statements of intent had been filed and which were determined to meet the criteria for restoration. Publication of this list of 345 titles served to create a public record of works for which complete statements of intent had been filed with the Copyright Office. Restoration of copyright protection for these works was effective Jan. 1, 1995.
A national or domiciliary of the United States who made or acquired copies of listed works before Dec. 8, 1993 (the date of enactment of implementing legislation), is allowed to continue to perform or distribute copies for up to one year after publication of the list in the Federal Register, which was Feb. 13, 1995.
The Copyright Office received 367 statements. Of those, 242 were filed for the entire motion picture. One company filed 103 statements, each representing a single television series with multiple episode titles. The total number of titles in the television series was about 11,095. Twenty-one statements were rejected as ineligible. No statements were filed for an underlying work. All statements were from Mexico; none came from Canada.
Members of the Motion Picture Team in the Performing Arts Section of the Examining Division recorded these documents, examining each for eligibility for protection by virtue of its place of fixation or publication and the date of publication.
The documents were recorded without a fee, and certificates were not prepared. A model cataloging screen was established for recording the documents. The copyright owner's name and the title of the work appear along with a statement indicating the document is a statement of intent filed under NAFTA. The document files are in Volume 5000 of the Copyright Office records.
Judith Nierman is a writer-editor in the Copyright Office.