The Copyright Act of 1790 was the first federal copyright law in the United States, passed by Congress on May 31, 1790 under the title “An Act for the encouragement of learning.” It gave U.S. citizens and residents who authored maps, charts, or books an exclusive fourteen-year right to print and sell their work, with the option of one fourteen-year renewal if the author was still living and re-registered on time.1U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright Act of 1790 Congress drew its authority from Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which lets it secure exclusive rights to authors for limited times to promote progress in science and the useful arts.2U.S. Copyright Office. Timeline 18th Century
What the Act Protected and Who Could Claim It
The scope was narrow. Only three categories of work qualified: maps, charts, and books.3U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright Act of 1790 Engravings, musical scores, and dramatic works were not covered. Those forms would be added by later statutes.
Eligibility was just as limited. Only U.S. citizens or residents could claim protection.4GovTrack. Copyright Act of 1790 Section 5 of the Act went further and expressly stated that nothing in the law barred anyone from importing, reprinting, or selling works written and published by foreign nationals outside the United States.1U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright Act of 1790 American printers could reproduce European books freely, without permission and without paying royalties. Foreign authors got nothing from the U.S. system.
How Long Protection Lasted
An author’s exclusive right ran for fourteen years from the date the title was recorded with the district court clerk.1U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright Act of 1790 Once that term ended, the work fell into the public domain unless the author had renewed.
Renewal added a second fourteen-year term, but only under two conditions. The author had to be alive when the first term expired, and had to re-register the title with the clerk during the six months before that expiration, repeating the same formalities used for the original registration.1U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright Act of 1790 The absolute maximum was therefore twenty-eight years, and only for authors who lived long enough and filed on time. Miss the six-month window, and the work passed into the public domain permanently.
How Authors Secured a Copyright
Getting protection in 1790 looked nothing like modern copyright. There was no Copyright Office and no Library of Congress role yet. Authors worked through the federal district courts and had to complete three separate steps.
Recording the Title With the Court Clerk
Before publication, the author delivered a printed copy of the work’s title to the clerk of the district court in the author’s home jurisdiction. The clerk entered the title in a dedicated ledger using the format the statute prescribed, listing the author, the district, the date, and the full title. A certified copy under the court’s seal was available on request. Recording cost sixty cents, and each sealed copy cost another sixty cents.1U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright Act of 1790
Publishing Notice in Newspapers
Recording was not enough on its own. Within two months of the registration date, the author had to publish a copy of the clerk’s record in one or more newspapers and run that notice for four consecutive weeks.1U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright Act of 1790 The point was to put the public on notice that the work was claimed.
Depositing a Copy With the Secretary of State
Once the work was published, the author had six months to deliver a copy to the Secretary of State.1U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright Act of 1790 That gave the federal government a permanent record of the exact work being claimed.
All three steps were mandatory. Skip one and the copyright failed.
Infringement and Penalties
The Act treated two kinds of unauthorized use separately.
Copying a Registered Work
Section 2 covered anyone who printed, reprinted, imported, or sold copies of a registered work without the author’s written consent. Every infringing copy was forfeited to the author, who had to destroy them. The infringer also owed fifty cents for every infringing sheet found in their possession. Half of that money went to the author; the other half went to the United States.4GovTrack. Copyright Act of 1790 On a large print run, the per-sheet fines accumulated quickly.
Publishing an Unpublished Manuscript
Section 6 addressed a different injury: publishing someone’s unpublished manuscript without permission. Instead of fixed per-sheet fines, the author could sue for actual damages through a special court action.1U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright Act of 1790 A stolen manuscript could cause harms, such as the loss of control over when and how a work appeared, that a per-sheet count would not capture.
Wheaton v. Peters and Strict Compliance
The Supreme Court’s first major interpretation of the Act came in 1834. Henry Wheaton, a former Reporter of Decisions, sued his successor Richard Peters over a condensed edition of Supreme Court opinions Wheaton had originally compiled. Wheaton argued he held a perpetual common-law copyright in his published reports, separate from any statutory formalities.
The Court rejected that theory. It held that Congress had “created the right” to copyright through the 1790 Act, rather than codifying some pre-existing perpetual right. An author might retain a common-law right in an unpublished manuscript, but once a work was published, the only protection available came from the statute, and the statute demanded strict compliance with every step. If an author failed to record the title, run the newspaper notice, or deposit the copy with the Secretary of State, no copyright existed.5Justia. Wheaton v. Peters
That principle, that copyright is a creature of statute and comes only through compliance with the rules Congress writes, shaped American copyright doctrine for more than 150 years.
How the Law Changed After 1790
The 1790 Act was the beginning, not the end. Congress revised it repeatedly as new creative forms and technologies appeared.
The first general revision came in 1831. Congress added musical compositions to the list of protected works and extended the initial term from fourteen years to twenty-eight years. The renewal period stayed at fourteen years, so the maximum total protection became forty-two years.6U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright Lore – First General Revision Gave Copyright to Musical Compositions and Extended Term
In 1870, Congress moved copyright administration into the Library of Congress, ending the district-court-clerk system.7U.S. Copyright Office. History of U.S. Copyright Office The Copyright Act of 1909 brought further expansion, and the Copyright Act of 1976, still the backbone of current law, overhauled the system entirely.
The sharpest break with the 1790 model came in 1988, when the United States joined the Berne Convention. Under Berne principles, copyright attaches automatically the moment an original work is fixed in a tangible form. No court clerk, no newspaper notice, no government deposit needed to bring the right into existence. For an individual author, protection now runs for the author’s life plus seventy years.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. Title 17 USC 302 – Duration of Copyright: Works Created on or After January 1, 1978 That is a long distance from the twenty-eight-year ceiling of 1790. Registration still matters in practical terms, because you generally must register a U.S. work before suing for infringement, but it is no longer the price of admission to having a copyright at all.