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Perpetual copyright refers to a copyright which does not expire. It is highly uncommon, as the current laws of all countries with copyright statutes set a standard limit on the duration, based either on the date of creation/publication, or on the date of the creator's death. (See List of countries' copyright length.) Exceptions have sometimes been made, however, for unpublished works. Usually, special legislation is required, granting a perpetual copyright to a specific work.

"Common law" copyright

Common law once had a doctrine of copyright where unpublished works were restricted by their authors indefinitely. This has been repudiated in the United States and Britain, where the courts have ruled that copyright is a purely legislative state.^{citation needed}

Portugal

Portugal amended the Copyright Act in 1927, from its previous 50 years modified Copyright term to "perpetual". However, this stipulation was withdrawn in 1966.^{citation needed}

United Kingdom

The UK Copyright Act 1775 established a type of perpetual copyright under which the King James Bible was allowed to be printed only by the Royal printer and by the printers of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. This provision was abolished by the Copyright, Designs and patents Act 1988, but under transitional arrangements (Schedule I, section 13(1)) these printing rights do not fully expire until 2039.

J. M. Barrie's play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up is covered by special legislation establishing that Great Ormond Street Hospital may collect royalties in perpetuity.¹ However, this is not strictly-speaking a perpetual copyright because the hospital does not retain creative control over the work.² Note that the provision applies to the play and to performances and adaptations of it, not to the earlier Peter Pan stories in The Little White Bird.

United States

In the United States, perpetual copyright is prohibited by the US Constitution, which provides that copyright must be "for limited times". However, it does not specify how long that term can be, and it has successively been extended by Congress, retroactively extending the terms of any copyrights still in force. Some have argued that two consecutive extensions of the copyright term in the 1970s and 1990s have created a de facto "perpetual copyright on the installment plan", but this argument has been rejected by the US Supreme Court in Eldred v. Ashcroft, which held that the term of copyright may be extended by Congress, so long as it is still a limited term at the time of each extension.³

Singapore

Pursuant to Section 197 of the Copyright Act, unpublished governmental literary, dramatic and musical works are under perpetual copyright, but once published, they are copyrighted for 70 years following publication.⁴

References

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