The Bottom Line: You may use the height of Mt. Everest and other facts from Guinness or any other source as much as you want. But if you scan Guinness World Records, rename it My Big Book of Facts, and publish it in print or on the web, you violate Guinness’ compilation copyright.
Duration of Copyright Protection
Section 302 of the Act prescribes the term of copyright protection. Copyright protection lasts much longer today than it did under the original 1790 Copyright Act, which prescribed a term of fourteen years with a possible fourteen-year renewal.[1] In the period immediately prior to the 1976 Act, copyrights were issued for twenty-eight years, with an option to renew and extend the copyright for an additional twenty-eight-year term.[2] The 1976 Act changed the way we calculate copyright duration by factoring in the author’s lifespan and eliminating the renewal requirement. In 1998, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act further lengthened copyright duration.[3]
Here are the current terms for the most common types of work published or created after 1978, the effective date of the 1976 Act:
- For a work by a single author, protection lasts for the author’s life plus another seventy years.
- When a work is authored by two or more individuals (called joint authorship), copyright lasts for seventy years after the death of last surviving author.
- Copyright in anonymous works, works by corporate authors, and works made for hire, last for ninety-five years from the year of first publication or 120 years from its creation, whichever expires first.
The length of copyright protection gets more complicated than this, particularly with regard to works created before January 1, 1978. Here are some other terms:
- A work published from 1923 to 1963 and that has a copyright notice is protected for twenty-eight years, with the possibility of an additional
