The Copyright Office’s records are open to the public. Moreover, on request, the Copyright Office will search its records for you for $65 for each hour or fraction of an hour the search takes. For information on searching the Office records concerning the copyright status or ownership of a work, request Circular 22, “How to Investigate the Copyright Status of a Work,” and Circular 23, “The Copyright Card Catalog and the Online Files of the Copyright Office.”

Copyright Office records in machine-readable form catalogued from January 1, 1978, to the present, including registration and renewal information and recorded documents, are now available for searching online. You can examine these files through LOCIS (Library of Congress Information System). Connect to LOCIS at www.loc.gov/copyright/rb.html.