Copyright and Marriage Equality Act
Official title: To amend title 17, United States Code, with respect to the definition of "widow" and "widower", and for other purposes.
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Referred to the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet.
Copyright and Marriage Equality Act - Amends federal copyright law to revise the definition of "widow" or "widower" for purposes of provisions concerning the transfer of a copyright to an author's spouse or other next of kin following the author's death. Declares that an individual is the widow or widower of an author if the courts of the state in which the individual and the author were married (or, if the individual and the author were not married in any state but were validly married in another jurisdiction, the courts of any state) would find that the individual and the author were validly married at the time of the author's death. (Currently, only the author's surviving spouse under the law of the author's domicile at the time of death is considered a widow.)
- Introduced in House Formatted Text PDF Formatted XML
Cite this page
U.S. Congress. (2026). H.R. 5617: Copyright and Marriage Equality Act. 113th Congress. Open America. https://openamerica.io/bill/113-HR-5617/
"H.R. 5617: Copyright and Marriage Equality Act." 113th Congress, 2026, Open America, https://openamerica.io/bill/113-HR-5617/.
H.R. 5617, 113th Cong. (2026), https://openamerica.io/bill/113-HR-5617/.
[H.R. 5617: Copyright and Marriage Equality Act](https://openamerica.io/bill/113-HR-5617/)