This act became effective July 1, 1909 and was a major update to the Copyright Act of 1790. The act provided the rights to owners of works to print, reprint, publish and vend the copyrighted work as well as to translate the work to other languages. Protected works before amendments include: Books including composite and cyclopedic works, directories, gazetteers and other compilations, periodicals including newspapers, lectures, sermons and addresses prepared for oral delivery, dramatic musical productions, musical compositions, maps, works of arts models or designs for works of art, reproductions of works of art, drawings or plastic works of a scientific or technical character, photos, prints and pictorial illustrations. This act was repealed and suspended by the Copyright Act of 1976. The act protects works that are (1) published and (2) have a notice of copyright affixed to them. At the time of this act State copyright laws governed protections for works that were not published. While this act was in place works that had been published whether they contained notice of copyright or not were protected by federal law. If there was no notice attached to the work the work was considered part of the public domain. This act protected works for a period of 28 years and allowed authors the opportunity to apply for an extension of 28 years.
Amendments to the act:
Townsend Amendment of 1912- Added motion pictures to the list of protected works. Prior to this motion pictures were registered as collections of still photographs.
Act to amend section 75- This section added information under the seal of the copyright to include the name of the country of
