Copyright reversion is the federal right of an author, or their statutory heirs, to terminate a prior transfer or license of a copyright and take the rights back, regardless of what the original contract said. The main window opens 35 years after the grant was signed for deals made on or after January 1, 1978, and 56 years after copyright was secured for older grants. It stays open for five years. To use it, you have to serve a written notice on the current rights holder between two and ten years before the date you pick, and record a copy with the U.S. Copyright Office before that date arrives. Miss the window on a given grant and the right to terminate that grant is gone for good.117 U.S.C. § 203; 17 U.S.C. § 304
Who Holds the Right to Terminate
The right belongs to the author who signed the original grant. It cannot be waived, and a clause in the publishing or licensing contract giving it up has no effect. Congress built the right this way because authors often sign early, before anyone knows what a work is worth, and the statute overrides whatever the parties agreed to.
Two categories of transfers fall outside the statute entirely. Works made for hire cannot be terminated, because the employer is the legal author from the start. That exclusion also reaches specially commissioned works in the categories the statute lists when there is a written agreement labeling the work as made for hire. A freelance illustrator whose contract designated cover art as work for hire in a collective work generally has no termination right later. Check the status of the work before assuming otherwise. The second exclusion is grants made by will: the statute applies only to transfers made “otherwise than by will,” so a bequest of copyrights to a publisher or a family member is not subject to termination.
When the author has died, the right passes to a fixed hierarchy of family members set by federal law. A will cannot redirect it.
- If there is a surviving spouse and no children or grandchildren, the spouse holds the entire termination interest.
- If there is a spouse plus children, the spouse holds half and the author’s surviving children and the surviving children of any deceased child share the other half.
- If there is no surviving spouse, the children and grandchildren hold the full interest, divided per stirpes, with grandchildren stepping into a deceased parent’s share.
- Only if no spouse, children, or grandchildren survive does the interest pass to the author’s executor, administrator, or personal representative.
Where the interest is split among heirs, more than half of the deceased author’s interest must agree to exercise it.
Joint Works
If two or more authors jointly created the work and jointly signed the grant, a majority of the signing authors can terminate. Unanimity is not required. Where one co-author has died, that author’s share is treated as a single unit held by the statutory heirs, and the majority-of-half rule governs how their family exercises it.
When the Window Opens
The math depends on when the grant was signed.
Grants Signed On or After January 1, 1978
The termination window opens 35 years after the date the grant was signed and stays open for five years. If the grant covered the right of publication, the window instead opens at the earlier of two dates: 35 years after the work was actually published under the grant, or 40 years after the grant was signed.
The notice must be served no fewer than two and no more than ten years before the chosen effective date. To terminate on January 1, 2035, the earliest possible service date is January 1, 2025, and the latest is January 1, 2033. Getting this window wrong is the most common reason termination attempts fail. There is no cure for a late notice.
Once a valid notice is served, the future rights that will revert on the termination date become vested immediately. The current grantee cannot take steps to unwind the termination after proper notice has been delivered.
Grants Signed Before January 1, 1978
Older grants follow 17 U.S.C. § 304(c). The window opens 56 years after the date copyright was originally secured, or on January 1, 1978, whichever came later, and lasts five years. The two-to-ten-year notice rule is the same.
Congress added a backstop in § 304(d) for authors who missed the § 304(c) window before the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act took effect in 1998. If the earlier right expired unused, a new five-year window opens at the end of 75 years from the date copyright was originally secured. The extension added 20 years to the copyright term, and this second chance lets authors and heirs share in that value instead of leaving it all with the grantee.
Writing, Serving, and Recording the Notice
A valid termination notice has to identify the title of each work being reclaimed, give the date the original grant was signed, list the authors who participated in that grant, name the original grantees, and state the effective date of termination, which must fall within the applicable five-year window.
If the original grantee has been acquired, merged, or otherwise succeeded, the notice must be directed to the current successor in interest. Federal regulations require a “reasonable investigation” into who currently owns the rights. Searching the Copyright Office’s records and corporate filings is the standard approach. Identifying the wrong entity does not automatically doom the notice, but skipping the investigation could.
Signatures
Every living author who is terminating must sign, or have a duly authorized agent sign on their behalf. If the author has died, the statutorily required number and proportion of heirs must sign, and each signer must include a brief statement of their relationship to the deceased author. When an agent signs, the notice must clearly identify the person on whose behalf the agent is acting.
Errors That Won’t Sink the Notice
Under 37 CFR § 201.10, mistakes that don’t materially undermine the notice’s purpose are excused if made in good faith and without intent to deceive. That specifically covers errors in a work’s registration number or date, errors in listing the surviving persons who executed the grant, and errors in describing the precise relationships of signers to a deceased author. The forgiveness is meaningful, because the information often spans decades and can be hard to pin down.
How to Serve It
Serve the notice on each grantee (or successor) whose rights are being terminated. Three methods are allowed:
- Personal service by hand-delivery.
- First-class mail or a reputable courier, sent to the last known address found after a reasonable investigation.
- Electronic transmission to an email address the grantee has publicly designated for legal notices, or one expressly provided with written consent within 30 days before service.
Certified mail is often recommended in practice because it creates a delivery receipt, but the regulation does not require it. First-class mail to the right address after a reasonable investigation satisfies the statute.
Recording With the Copyright Office
After service, a copy of the notice must be recorded with the U.S. Copyright Office before the effective date of termination. Recording is a condition for the termination to take legal effect, not an optional step. The current base fee is $95 for electronic filing or $125 for paper, covering one work identified by one title or registration number. Additional works on the same document cost $60 per group of up to 10 titles for paper filing, or $60 for up to 50 titles electronically. A proposed fee increase published in the Federal Register in March 2026 would raise the base fee to $215 electronic and $320 paper, so verify the schedule at the time of filing.
What Reverts, and What Doesn’t
On the effective date, all rights under federal copyright law that were covered by the terminated grant return to the author or the heirs who hold the termination interest. That includes reproduction, distribution, public performance, display, and the right to create derivative works. The reversion happens automatically by operation of law and benefits all owners of the termination interest, even those who did not sign the notice. If two of three co-authors served the notice, the third co-author’s share still reverts.
Derivative Works Already in Existence
The biggest limit on reversion is the derivative works exception. A derivative work created under the authority of the original grant before termination can continue to be used under the terms of that grant after termination. A studio that produced a movie adaptation before the author reclaimed the underlying book can keep distributing that film indefinitely. What the former grantee cannot do is create new derivative works after the termination date. A sequel or remake using the reverted source material requires a fresh license from the author.
In music, the U.S. Copyright Office has clarified that the derivative works exception does not apply to the statutory mechanical blanket license created by the Music Modernization Act. After termination, the royalties paid by digital music providers through the Mechanical Licensing Collective go to the post-termination copyright owner, not the terminated publisher.
New Deals After Termination
Any new grant of reclaimed rights is valid only if signed by the same number and proportion of owners required to terminate in the first place. A single heir cannot unilaterally license the work when the termination interest is shared.
Timing has one carve-out. The author or heirs can negotiate a new agreement with the original grantee (or that grantee’s successor) after the notice has been served, even before the termination date arrives. Congress recognized that many authors will want to stay with their current publisher or label on better terms, and this lets them do so without a gap in exploitation. No comparable early deal can be made with an unrelated third party. Grants to anyone other than the original grantee are valid only after termination actually takes effect.
Termination Stops at the U.S. Border
The statute reaches only rights arising under U.S. federal copyright law. Even when the original grant covered rights “throughout the world,” termination is effective only within the United States. A grantee’s ability to exploit the work in foreign countries under those countries’ copyright laws is not affected. Neither public nor private international law guarantees that U.S. termination rights will be honored abroad, which makes the choice-of-law clause in any publishing or licensing contract worth reviewing carefully before signing.
Why the Details Matter
Reversion is one of the few places in intellectual property law where the deal you signed decades ago can be undone on your terms. The trade-off is that the statute is unforgiving on procedure. A wrong effective date, a notice served too early or too late, a missed recordation with the Copyright Office, a signature from the wrong subset of heirs — any of these can void the attempt, and the window on that particular grant does not reopen. For high-value works or older grants with tangled ownership histories, having a copyright attorney handle the research, drafting, service, and recording is common practice. Getting it right the first time is the only chance you get.