The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998 extended the copyright term for literary, television and cinematic works and characters. It granted an additional 20 years of copyright status, protecting works for 70 years after the author’s death. The CTEA did not restore copyright status to those works that had already entered the public domain. It has been referred to as the Mickey Mouse Act and has been criticized for inhibiting the production of creative works derived from copyrighted material.
The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998 was instituted to lengthen the time copyrighted material would be considered non-public domain material. The CTEA was created to extend the original provisions of a copyright law instituted in 1790 by the United States government and the successor copyright law of 1976.
Both the House of Representatives and the Senate voted by majority for the CTEA. President Clinton signed the act in late 1998. Thus the CTEA had bipartisan support, although Bono had served the Republican Party during his lifetime.
The CTEA was the brainchild of former entertainer Sonny Bono. Bono later became an elected member of the House of Representatives. His life was tragically cut short by a skiing accident in January 1998. His wife, Mary Bono, was elected to replace her in the House and further promoted the CTEA.
The objective of the CTEA was to extend the terms of copyright to literary, television and cinematic works and to characters in literature, television and cinema. Under the CTEA, currently copyrighted works were granted an additional 20 years of copyright status.
Thus a copyrighted work is protected for the life of the author and therefore for 70 years after his death. For a copyrighted work or character that was created through the collaboration, the copyright extends for the life of the authors and 95 years after the authors’ death.
In addition, material created outside the United States based on a copyrighted character or theme may not be sold in the United States. For example, a video game featuring a copyrighted character created in Japan cannot be legally sold in the United States.
The CTEA did not restore copyright status to those works, which had already entered the public domain. It only applied to works that currently still held copyright status. Some critics argued that this was unfair to works that would have retained their status and had entered the public domain a few years before the passage of the CTEA.
The CTEA has sometimes been referred to as the Mickey Mouse Act, as one of the major protections it provided was for Disney characters such as Mickey Mouse, who would soon lose their copyright status. Some critics believe that intellectual property protection goes too far, and the term of copyright now could inhibit the production of creative works that could be derived from copyrighted material.
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