History of inventions and copyright protections

1776: *The power to enact copyright law is granted in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, also known as the Copyright Clause, which states: "The Congress shall have Power [. . .] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." This clause forms the basis for U.S. copyright law ("Science", "Authors", "Writings") and patent law ("useful Arts", "Inventors", "Discoveries"), and includes the limited terms (or durations) allowed for copyrights and patents ("limited Times"), as well as the items they may protect ("exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"). In the U.S., copyright is administered by the United States Copyright Office, a part of the Library of Congress. *Thomas Paine's pamphlet "Common Sense" published - 500,000 copies published its first year in 25 editions. "Common Sense" was highly influential in rallying public opinion to the side of United States independence.

1790: *Copyright Act of 1790 - established U.S. copyright with term of 14 years with 14-year renewal The U.S. Congress first exercised its power to enact copyright legislation with the Copyright Act of 1790. The Act secured an author the exclusive right to publish and vend "maps, charts and books" for a term of 14 years, with the right of renewal for one additional 14 year term if the author was still alive. The act did not regulate other kinds of writings, such as musical compositions or newspapers and specifically noted that it did not prohibit copying the works of foreign authors. The vast majority of writings were never registered — between 1790 and 1799, of 13,000 titles published in the United States, only 556 works were registered. *William Blake publishes The Marriage of Heaven and Hell; Mary Wollstonecraft publishes A Vindication of the Rights of Men; Edmund Burke publishes Reflections on the Revolution in France;

1802: *Prints added to protected works *Washington Irving makes his first appearance in print at age nineteen, submitting observational letters to the New York Morning Chronicle under the name Jonathan Oldstyle *The Journal of the Royal Institution records one of the first experiments in photography.

1831: *First general revision of the copyright law. Music added to works protected against unauthorized printing and vending. First term of copyright extended to 28 years with privilege of renewal for term of 14 years. *William Lloyd Garrison begins publication of the Liberator, an abolitionist periodical. *Edgar Allan Poe publishes his collection Poems

1837: *Samuel F.B. Morse develops a design for the electrical telegraph. America's first telegram was sent by Morse on January 6, 1838, across two miles of wire at Speedwell Ironworks near Morristown, New Jersey. The message read "A patient waiter is no loser." On May 24, 1844, he sent the message "What hath God wrought" (quoting Numbers 23:23) from the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the Capitol in Washington to the old Mt. Clare Depot in Baltimore.

1856: *Dramatic compositions added to protected works. *Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp; Herman Melville publishes The Piazza Tales and I and My Chimney

1865: *Photographs added to protected works. *Mark Twain's story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is published in the New York Saturday Press. *P. T. Barnum publishes The Humbugs of the World

1867: *Christopher Latham Sholes invents the first successful manual typewriter

1870: *Second general revision of the copyright law. Copyright functions centralized in the Library of Congress under the direction of the Librarian of Congress, and which all authors are required to deposit in the Library two copies of every book, pamphlet, map, print, and piece of music registered under copyright in the United States. Works of art added to protected works. Act reserved to authors the right to create certain derivative works including translations and dramatizations. Indexing of the record of registrations began. *In New York City, the first pneumatic-subway is opened. *Jules Verne publishes Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

1876: *Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone

1891: *First U.S. copyright law authorizing establishment of copyright relations with foreign countries. Records of works registered, now called the Catalog of Copyright Entries, published in book form for the first time in July 1891. *Thomas Hardy publishes Tess of the d'Urbervilles; Oscar Wilde publishes Salome *Recording companies are mass-producing phonograph records

1897: *Copyright Office established as a separate department of the Library of Congress. *Music protected against unauthorized public performance. *Bram Stoker publishes Dracula *John Philip Sousa publishes "Stars And Stripes Forever"

1908: *The Chicago Cubs win their second consecutive World Series. They have not won one since.

1909: *Copyright Act of 1909 - third general revision of the copyright law. Admission of certain classes of unpublished works to copyright registration. Term of statutory protection for a work copyrighted in published form measured from the date of publication of the work. Renewal term extended from 14 to 28 years. *L. Frank Baum publishes The Road to Oz; William James publishes A Pluralistic Universe

1912: *Motion pictures, previously registered as photographs, added to classes of protected works. *The Musketeers of Pig Alley, directed by D.W. Griffith, debuts as the first gangster film.

1920: *KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania receives its license and goes on the air as the first US licensed commercial broadcasting station.

1930: *New York Times article, March 17, 1930: "Whalen to Be Asked to War on Song Pirates; Publishers Say They Face $15,000,000 Loss" - Reporting that the music publishing industry faced a loss of $15,000,000 nationally in the ensuing year, a committee of publishers will ask Police Commissioner Whalen today to wage a war on the song-sheet racket and its sponsors. http://icanhaz.com/timepirate

1941: *WCBS and WNBC begin broadcasting out of New York as the first commercially-licensed TV stations in the United States *Joe DiMaggio records his 56-game hitting streak, still the longest in baseball history

1953: *Recording and performing rights extended to nondramatic literary works. *The UNIVAC 1103 is the first commercial computer to use random access memory.

1969: *ARPANET, the predecessor to the Internet, makes the first networked connection between computers

1971: *Ray Tomlinson creates what was to become the standard Internet e-mail address format, using the @ sign to separate user names from host names.

1973: *Vydec is the first manufacturer to produce a word processing system using floppy disks for storage [History of Word Processing Through 1986: http://www.stanford.edu/~bkunde/fb-press/articles/wdprhist.html]

1975: *Bill Gates founds Microsoft

1976: *Copyright Act of 1976 - extended term to either 75 years or life of author plus 50 years, eliminated renewal option and registration requirement *Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak found Apple Computer *Wings' "Silly Love Songs" is Billboard's top record of the year

1983: *Motorola DynaTAC 8000X is the first cellular phone to receive FCC approval in the U.S.

1985: *Microsoft Windows 1.0 released *Steve Jobs leaves Apple Computer

1988: *Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988 - established copyrights of U.S. works in Berne Convention countries *George Michael's Faith is the top-selling album in the United States

1989: *Tim Berners-Lee develops the structure for the World Wide Web at CERN in Switzerland *Richard Stallman releases the first version of the General Public License (GPL) for software, which allows free distribution and modification of the code under the proviso that derived works be available under the same license

1994: *Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) of 1994 - restored U.S. copyright for certain foreign works *Netscape Navigator 1.0, the first widely distributed Web browser, released

1997: *Apple Computer buys NeXT and Steve Jobs returns to Apple *AOL introduces Instant Messenger

1998: *Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 - extended terms to 95/120 years or life plus 70 years *Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 - criminalized some cases of copyright infringement *Google.com launches *Apple Computer introduces the first iMac *Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" is the top single in almost the entire world

1999: *Napster, the first widely-popular music-sharing service, launches

2001: *First iPod released, with 5GB of storage, and Apple begins opening retail stores *Napster shuts down after U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled Napster liable for copyright infringement in A&M Records v. Napster

2002: *Creative Commons releases its first set of copyright licenses free for public use that apply the "some rights reserved" option to creative works.

2003: *MySpace.com launches *iTunes Music Store launches

2004: *Flickr.com launches

2005: *Family Entertainment and Copyright Act of 2005 - criminalized more cases of copyright infringement, permitted technology to "sanitize" works *YouTube.com launches

2006-2008: *Remix culture *Lawrence Lessig steps down as head of Creative Commons [VIDEO] *As of June 2008, iTunes Music Store has sold 5 billion songs, accounting for more than 70% of worldwide online digital music sales, and in 2008 became the leading music retailer in the United States. *As of November 2007, 3.3 billion cell phone subscriptions

2008: *Bill Gates retires from day-to-day operations at Microsoft