Under the copyright statute in effect before 1978, the notice was
required to include "the name of the copyright proprietor." The present
act requires that the notice include "the name of the owner of copyright
in the work, or an abbreviation by which the name can be recognized, or a
generally known alternative designation of the owner." The name in the
notice (sometimes in combination with the other statements on the copy,
records, disk, tape, container, or label) often gives persons wishing to
use the work the information needed to identify the owner from whom
licenses or permission can be sought. In other cases, the name provides a
starting point for a search in the Copyright Office records or catalogs,
as explained at the beginning of this circular.

In the case of works published before 1978, copyright registration is
made in the name of the individual person or the entity identified as the
copyright owner in the notice. For works published on or after January 1,
1978, registration is made in the name of the person or entity owning all
the rights on the date the registration is made. This may or may not be
the name appearing in the notice. In addition to its records of copyright
registration, the Copyright Office maintains extensive records of
assignments, exclusive licenses, and other documents dealing with
copyright ownership.

AD INTERIM

*Ad interim* copyright was a special short-term copyright that applied to
certain books and periodicals in the English language that were first
manufactured and published outside the United States. It was a partial
exception to the manufacturing requirements of the previous U.S.
copyright law. Its purpose was to secure temporary U.S. protection for a
work, pending the manufacture of an edition in the United States. The ad
interim requirements changed several times over the years and were
subject to a number of exceptions and qualifications.

The manufacturing provisions of the copyright act expired on July 1,
1986, and are no longer a part of the copyright law. The transitional and
supplementary provisions of the act provide that for any work in which ad
interim copyright was subsisting or capable of being secured on December
31, 1977, copyright protection would be extended for a term compatible
with the other works in which copyright was subsisting on the effective
date of the new act. Consequently, if the work was first published on or
after July 1, 1977, and was eligib