United States Code

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About
Bulk downloads are planned

A later version will serve the corpus in bulk through the API: whole titles, whole release points, and the differences between them, refreshed from the Office of the Law Revision Counsel as each new release point is published.

Until then the official downloads are the place to get the source XML, and every page here links to the exact file its text came from.

Release-point downloads at the OLRC

Search or go to a citation

How this box searches

Type a citation and it goes straight to the provision — that is parsed here and never reaches the index. Type anything else and it becomes a keyword search over OpenSearch, which holds the text of every section.

Because it is OpenSearch, its query syntax works: every word you type has to appear, and "…", -, |, * and ~1 loosen or narrow that deliberately.

Read the search and citation guide

A citation goes straight there; anything else searches the text. Prefix cites to find provisions citing one.

Accounts are coming, but are not switched on yet

A later version will let you sign in and keep track of things: watch provisions and whole titles, get alerted when a release point changes text you care about, and keep a set of favourites to come back to.

Everything else works without an account and will keep working without one. The reading, the search, the version history, the redlines and the API are all open.

Title 17—

Release point

CHAPTER 3— DURATION OF COPYRIGHT

Release point 119-73 · current through 01/23/2026

Sections

§ 301 Preemption with respect to other laws
§ 302 Duration of copyright: Works created on or after January 1, 1978
§ 303 Duration of copyright: Works created but not published or copyrighted before January 1, 1978
§ 304 Duration of copyright: Subsisting copyrights
§ 305 Duration of copyright: Terminal date

Titles
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About
Source XML (OLRC)

A conceptual redesign of the Office of the Law Revision Counsel's site, built from the official USLM downloads. Not an official publication of the United States government. More about this site.