Statute. Copyright in the American colonies was based on English law. The 1710 English copyright act, which identified literary ownership with composition, granted the sole right of publication to the author for fourteen years, with the right automatically renewed for the next fourteen years if the author were still alive. In the United States, Congress passed the first national copyright act in 1790, modeled on the 1710 act, granting fourteen-year copyrights to American citizens and residents with the same automatic fourteen-year renewal. In 1831 Congress revised the law, largely due to the efforts of Noah Webster, to extend the copyright period to twenty-eight years. The act remained limited to U.S. citizens and residents, and the time limitations suggested no inclination toward perpetual, natural copyright. During the 1820s and 1830s, when most European countries put into force international copyright acts, the United States did not follow suit.

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