Copyright law of the United States

The Library of Congress (LC or sometimes LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the de facto national library of the United States. It also administers copyright law through the United States Copyright Office, and it houses the Congressional Research Service.

Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. It is housed in three buildings on Capitol Hill, adjacent to the United States Capitol, along with the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia, and additional storage facilities at Fort George G. Meade and Cabin Branch in Hyattsville, Maryland. The library's functions are overseen by the librarian of Congress, and its buildings are maintained by the architect of the Capitol. The LC is one of the largest libraries in the world, containing approximately 173 million items and employing over 3,000 staff. Its collections are "universal, not limited by subject, format, or national boundary, and include research materials from all parts of the world and in more than 470 languages".

In the United States copyright law, a copyright notice is a notice of statutorily prescribed form that informs users of the underlying claim to copyright ownership in a published work.

Copyright is a form of protection provided by U.S. law to authors of "original works of authorship". When a work is published under the authority of the copyright owner, a notice of copyright may be placed on all publicly distributed copies or phonorecords. The use of the notice is the responsibility of the copyright owner and does not require permission from, or registration with, the Copyright Office.

The Copyright Clause (also known as the Intellectual Property Clause, Copyright and Patent Clause, or the Progress Clause) describes an enumerated power listed in the United States Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8).

The clause, which is the basis of copyright and patent laws in the United States, states that:

A work of the United States government is defined by the United States copyright law, as "a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person's official duties". Under section 105 of the Copyright Act of 1976, such works are not entitled to domestic copyright protection under U.S. law and are therefore in the public domain.

This act only applies to U.S. domestic copyright as that is the extent of U.S. federal law. The U.S. government asserts that it can still hold the copyright to those works in other countries.