United States Copyright Office
government body that maintains records of copyright registration in the United States including a copyright catalog
The United States Copyright Office (USCO), a part of the United States Library of Congress, is a United States government body that registers copyright claims, records information about copyright ownership, provides information to the public, and assists Congress and other parts of the government on a wide range of copyright issues. It maintains online records of copyright registration and recorded documents within the copyright catalog, which is used by copyright title researchers who are attempting to clear a chain of title for copyrighted works.
The register of copyrights heads the Copyright Office. There is currently a dispute over who the register is. Shira Perlmutter, the 14th register, began serving from October 26, 2020. On May 10, 2025, President Donald Trump claimed to have fired Perlmutter to replace her with Paul Perkins as acting register. However, the register is an employee of Congress, not of the executive branch. Perlmutter's claim to the role has been endorsed by courts.
The Copyright Office is located in the James Madison Memorial Building of the Library of Congress, at 101 Independence Avenue SE, in Washington, DC. While open to the general public, appointments must be made to visit the Public Information Office and Copyright Public Records Reading Room.
History
The United States Constitution provides for establishing a system of extensive copyright laws in the United States.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “United States Copyright Office” as government body that maintains records of copyright registration in the United States including a copyright catalog. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as government body that maintains records of copyright registration in the United States including a copyright catalog. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1784058. VIAF identifies the subject as 123939062. The Library of Congress control number is n79117971. Authority coordinates are 38.887, -77.004. 5 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2020 and 2025.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “United States Copyright Office”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow United States Copyright Office primary sources, United States Copyright Office archive and United research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “United States Copyright Office”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “United States Copyright Office” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.