Document type: Checklist Practice area: Intellectual Property—Copyright Jurisdiction: United States (federal) Last reviewed: 5 September 2026

Part 1—Reconstruct the record

Find every grant:

  • The client's own files, including unopened boxes.
  • Prior counsel's closed files—retention schedules run decades.
  • Copyright Office recordation records—frequently the only surviving copy.
  • Copyright registration records.
  • The grantee's files, requested early.
  • Royalty statements, which usually identify the agreement by date.
  • Probate files where the author has died.
  • Guild, union, and performing rights organization records.

For each document, record:

  • Date of execution, and whether it is reliable.
  • Parties—did the author sign personally or through a loan-out entity?
  • Scope: works, rights, territories.
  • Is it a grant? An administration, collection, or management agreement is not a transfer or license and is not terminable.
  • Any work-made-for-hire language.
  • Any amendment, and whether it constitutes a new grant.

Copyright facts:

  • Creation date.

  • Publication date with notice for pre-1978 works—this is when copyright was secured and it drives the § 304 computation.

  • Registration numbers, original and renewal.

  • Is it a derivative work? A joint work? A collective work or a contribution to one?

  • Build a dated timeline per work, marking every uncertain date.

Part 2—Threshold question one: work made for hire

Employee's work—apply the agency factors:

  • Payroll, tax withholding, W-2?
  • Control over the manner and means of creation?
  • Whose tools and premises?
  • Ongoing relationship with the right to assign other projects?
  • Employee benefits?
  • Within the scope of employment?

Commissioned work—BOTH conditions required:

  • Does the work fall within one of the nine enumerated categories: contribution to a collective work; part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work; translation; supplementary work; compilation; instructional text; test; answer material for a test; atlas?
  • Is there a signed written agreement stating the work is a work made for hire?

Sector reminders:

  • Film contributions usually qualify under "part of a motion picture." The terminable asset is the underlying work.

  • Sound recordings are not among the nine categories; the question is whether the artist was an employee, which is doubtful for a featured artist and genuinely unresolved.

  • Contractor-created software rarely fits an enumerated category—a widely unexamined exposure.

  • Contract language calling something a work made for hire does not make it one.

  • If the work is for hire, the matter ends here. Tell the client plainly.

Part 3—Threshold question two: who executed the grant

  • Section 203 reaches grants executed by the author.
  • Section 304(c) reaches grants executed by the author or specified statutory successors.
  • Was the grant executed by a loan-out corporation? Whether § 203 reaches it is contested.
  • Was it executed by an heir after the author's death? Section 203 does not reach it.
  • Was it executed by a prior assignee?
  • For a joint work, note that a grant executed by one co-author terminates only that author's interest, and a grant executed jointly requires a majority of the executing authors.

Part 4—Compute the windows

Section 203, non-publication grant:

  • Window opens execution + 35 years; runs 5 years.

Section 203, publication grant:

  • Window opens at the earlier of publication + 35 years or execution + 40 years; runs 5 years.

Section 304(c):

  • Window opens copyright secured + 56 years; runs 5 years.

Section 304(d):

  • Window opens copyright secured + 75 years, where the § 304(c) window lapsed unexercised and the conditions are met.

In every case:

  • Notice served not less than 2 and not more than 10 years before the effective date.
  • Earliest possible notice = window open date minus 10 years.
  • Recordation before the effective date is a condition of effectiveness.

Then:

  • Compute every window for every grant.
  • Mark each: open / opening within five years / closed.
  • Diarize the earliest notice date and the close date for every open window.
  • For any closed § 304(c) window, check § 304(d).
  • Watch for multiple grants on the same work with different windows and different regimes.

Part 5—The family tree

The statutory scheme, which overrides the will:

  • Surviving spouse alone: the entire interest.
  • Children and grandchildren alone: the entire interest, per stirpes.
  • Both: spouse one-half; children and grandchildren the other half.
  • A deceased child's share passes to that child's children and is exercisable only by a majority of that line.
  • None surviving: the executor, administrator, personal representative, or trustee.

Collect:

  • Death certificates—author and any deceased child.
  • Marriage certificate; any divorce decree.
  • Birth certificates for every child and grandchild.
  • Adoption records—they matter and are routinely missed.
  • Probate file, will, and letters.
  • Contact information for every taker.

Then:

  • Compute each taker's share.
  • Confirm who must join to exceed one-half—note that exactly one-half is not enough.
  • Approach every taker early; an unreachable grandchild can defeat the termination.
  • Where a deceased child's line must act, confirm a majority of that line agrees.
  • Paper a takers' agreement: who signs, who advances costs, how the recaptured rights are administered, how proceeds are shared.
  • Identify conflicts among family members and arrange separate counsel where needed.
  • Explain to any dissenter that a majority may proceed and the dissenter still shares.

Part 6—The notice

Choose the effective date:

  • Within the five-year window.
  • Not less than 2 nor more than 10 years after service.
  • Serve early in the window—it opens the negotiation sooner and leaves room to correct a defect.
  • Coordinate effective dates across grants and works so the rights arrive as a usable package.

Required content:

  • The statutory basis: § 203, § 304(c), or § 304(d).
  • The name of each grantee or successor in title, and each address served.
  • For each work: title, author, and registration number if practicable.
  • A brief statement reasonably identifying the grant, with its date.
  • The effective date of termination.
  • For successors: a listing of the persons constituting more than one-half of the interest and the relationship establishing entitlement.
  • Signature by or for all terminating parties, with identity and capacity.

Drafting cautions:

  • Identify the grantee's current successor—catalogs change hands.
  • List every work. A work omitted is not terminated.
  • Identify the correct grant where there were multiple agreements and amendments.
  • Do not overreach—including works made for hire or grants outside the window invites a challenge to the whole notice.

Part 7—Service and recordation

Service:

  • Personal service or first-class mail to the last known address.
  • Reasonable investigation to identify the correct grantee or successor: corporate records, Copyright Office recordation, industry sources.
  • Serve every grantee and successor identified.
  • Retain proof of service.

Recordation:

  • File with the Copyright Office before the effective date—a condition of effectiveness.
  • Include the cover sheet, fee, and a statement of the manner and date of service.
  • Do not wait. Processing takes time; a notice recorded after the effective date terminates nothing.
  • Retain the recordation certificate.
  • Diarize the effective date and confirm recordation well in advance.

Part 8—Model what actually reverts

  • Reverts: United States rights in the identified works, prospectively, in the proportions the takers hold.
  • Does not revert: foreign rights; any claim for past exploitation.
  • Derivative works exception: works prepared under the grant before termination may continue to be utilized under the terms of the grant.
  • The Mills Music, Inc. v. Snyder, 469 U.S. 153 (1985) consequence: existing derivative works keep generating income under the original grant's royalty splits.
  • Inventory every derivative work—films, recordings, translations, adaptations—with dates, and estimate what share of income they represent.
  • Newly available: the right to authorize new derivative works to anyone after the effective date.
  • Give the client an honest number before any negotiation begins.

Part 9—The regrant window and the negotiation

  • Understand the rule: a further grant is valid only if made after the effective date—except a further grant to the original grantee or its successor, which may be made after the notice is served.
  • Author's side: develop credible alternatives for after the effective date, since only the incumbent can contract now.
  • Grantee's side: recognize this exclusive window is the most valuable thing the statute gives you, and do not spend it on a formalities fight.

Typical resolutions to model:

  • Amended agreement with improved royalty rates.
  • Partial reversion—some rights back, some retained.
  • A payment.
  • Shorter term with a defined further reversion.
  • Continued administration by the incumbent.

Part 10—If the rights actually revert

  • Confirm the recordation and the reversion in Copyright Office records.
  • Notify collecting societies, performing rights organizations, and administrators.
  • Update registrations and split information.
  • Establish administration: self-administer, appoint an administrator, or grant to a new party.
  • Address foreign rights fragmentation—the incumbent retains them and coordination requires an agreement.
  • Account for the derivative works income stream, which continues under the old arrangement.
  • Document the arrangement among the family.

Part 11—The grantee's defensive checklist

Work in order; several items are dispositive.

  • Work made for hire? If we are the statutory author, there is no grant to terminate.
  • Executed by the author? Check loan-outs, heirs, prior assignees.
  • Correct regime? Determined by execution date, not creation date.
  • Correct computation? Execution date, publication date, window open and close, effective date within the window.
  • Timely? Two to ten years before the effective date.
  • Required content present? Basis, grantee, works with titles/authors/registrations, grant identified, effective date, majority listing and entitlement.
  • Recorded before the effective date?
  • Do the signatories hold more than one-half? Build the family tree independently.
  • Which works are covered? Omitted works are not terminated.
  • What does the derivative works exception preserve? Inventory each work, when prepared, under what authority.
  • What foreign rights are unaffected?
  • Is the defense an outcome or leverage? A defective notice can be cured in an open window; usually it is leverage.

Part 12—Catalog exposure audit (grantee side)

  • Build a schedule of every grant: work, author, execution date, regime, window open, window close, earliest notice date.
  • Flag every grant whose earliest notice date has passed or arrives within five years.
  • For each flagged grant: work made for hire? likely takers? value?
  • Diarize every date. A notice should never be a surprise.
  • For high-value works, consider approaching the author or family proactively with improved terms before a notice is served.
  • Maintain a derivative works register: what was prepared, when, and under what authority.
  • Assign an operations owner; the audit is a project and maintaining it is a job.

Part 13—If the window has closed

  • Re-verify the computation—execution date, publication date, and which of the two § 203 triggers applies.
  • Check whether an amendment constitutes a new grant with its own window.
  • Check for separate grants on different rights; one may be open.
  • For a lapsed § 304(c) window, check § 304(d).
  • Check the rest of the catalog; windows arrive in sequence.

Other leverage:

  • Audit rights in the grant—usually present, rarely exercised, frequently productive.

  • Contractual reversion clauses—out-of-print, minimum sales, failure to exploit.

  • Scope limits—whether a decades-old grant reaches rights that did not exist when it was signed.

  • Territory and term limits.

  • Breach—failure to account, exploit, or pay.

  • Tell the client plainly what happened and what remains.

  • Build and diarize the schedule for every remaining grant, in a place that survives the current advisers.

Related documents

This checklist is general information, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship.