Simple English definitions for legal terms
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Definition: Investitive publication refers to the act of publicly distributing an author's work on a large enough scale to qualify for federal statutory copyright protection.
For example, if an author publishes their book and it becomes widely available to the public, it would be considered an investitive publication. This means that the author's work is protected by federal copyright laws.
Before the Copyright Act of 1976, the concept of publication was important in determining the level of copyright protection an author had. Divestitive publication, which was the public distribution of an author's work on a large enough scale to divest the author of any claim to state common-law copyright protection, was also a factor in determining copyright protection.
Today, investitive publication is less significant as copyright protection is granted from the moment a work is created, rather than when it is published.