CC0 Public Domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.
Ask a room full of genealogists who owns their family tree, and you will get a range of confident answers — most of them incomplete. The question touches copyright law, contract law, database rights, and platform terms of service in ways that interact in complex and sometimes counterintuitive ways. The short answer is that the legal landscape of genealogical data ownership is genuinely complicated, varies by jurisdiction, and is increasingly shaped by the terms of service of the platforms where most researchers now store and share their work. Understanding the basics is not optional for any serious researcher — it affects what you can legally do with your research, what platforms can do with it, and what protections you have if someone else uses your work without permission.
This article provides an overview of copyright as it applies to genealogical research — what can and cannot be protected, how platform terms of service affect your rights, and what practical steps researchers can take to protect their work.
Copyright Fundamentals: What the Law Actually Protects
Copyright law in the United States protects original works of authorship — creative expression fixed in a tangible form. The key word is original. Under the landmark 1991 Supreme Court decision[1] in Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., facts are not copyrightable, no matter how much effort went into collecting them. This is the foundational principle that shapes everything else in genealogical copyright: the raw data of genealogy — names, dates, relationships, places — cannot be protected by copyright, regardless of how many years of research produced them.
What this means in practice: the fact that your great-great-grandmother was born on March 15, 1872, in Baden-Württemberg cannot be owned by anyone. The date exists independently of any researcher’s effort. Any researcher who discovers that fact has the same right to use it as the person who found it first.
What can be protected by copyright is the original expression built around those facts — the narrative biography, the analytical conclusions, the creative organization of information, the written family history. If you write a well-crafted account of your ancestor’s immigration journey — weaving together the documentary evidence, historical context, and personal analysis — that narrative is copyrightable. The facts within it are not; the expression you have given them is.
The Dillman Family Association’s published family history book is a practical illustration of this principle. The book is built from genealogical facts — names, dates, relationships, places of birth and death — none of which are individually copyrightable. Anyone is free to use those facts. What is copyrightable is the book itself: the narrative prose that surrounds those facts, the analytical conclusions drawn from the evidence, the decisions about structure and organization, and the creative choices about what to include and how to present it. The DFA’s book is protected as an original work of creative expression, even though every individual fact within it is free for anyone to use. This distinction — free facts, protected expression — is the heart of genealogical copyright.
The same principle applies to family trees as data structures. A simple pedigree chart listing names, dates, and relationships contains no original creative expression — it is a collection of facts arranged in a standard format. It is very likely not copyrightable. A family history book with narrative chapters, analytical conclusions, and original organization is copyrightable. The line between the two is not always sharp, but the general principle is clear: facts are free, expression is protected.
📋 What This Means for Compiled Genealogies
The Feist decision also addressed the copyright status of compilations — collections of facts assembled by someone’s effort. The Court held that a compilation of facts can be copyrightable, but only to the extent that it involves original creative choices in the selection, coordination, or arrangement of facts — not merely for the effort of gathering them. The “sweat of the brow” theory — the idea that effort alone justifies copyright protection — was explicitly rejected.
For genealogists, this creates an important nuance. A simple, comprehensive alphabetical list of everyone buried in a cemetery is likely not copyrightable, because the selection (everyone) and the arrangement (alphabetical) involve no creative originality — they are the most obvious possible choices. A curated selection of notable individuals with original biographical notes, organized by a creative scheme chosen by the compiler, may be copyrightable — but only in those creative elements, not in the underlying facts.
This means that researchers who copy facts from other researchers’ compiled genealogies are on legally solid ground with respect to copyright — the facts themselves are free. What they cannot legally copy is the original expression: the narrative text, the analytical conclusions, the distinctive organization. In practice, the ethical standard in the genealogy community goes significantly beyond the legal minimum. Citing your sources, giving credit to the researchers whose work you built on, and seeking permission before reproducing substantial portions of others’ compiled work are professional obligations even where they are not strict legal requirements.
Public Domain Records: What You Can Use Freely
A large proportion of the records genealogists work with are in the public domain — meaning copyright has expired or never applied — and can be used freely without permission. U.S. federal government records are in the public domain by statute: census records, military service and pension files, naturalization records, Social Security Death Index (SSDI) data, and records produced by federal agencies are not subject to copyright. This applies to the records themselves; it does not necessarily apply to the database interface a commercial company has built to make those records searchable, or to a company’s digital images of those records.
Works published before January 1, 1929, are in the public domain in the United States. Works published between 1929 and 1977 require more careful analysis — copyright duration depends on whether the work was published with a copyright notice, whether the copyright was renewed, and other factors. Works published after 1977 are generally protected for the life of the author plus 70 years.
State and local government records occupy a more complex position. Unlike federal records, state government works are not automatically in the public domain under U.S. copyright law, though many states have their own provisions. Vital records — birth, marriage, and death certificates — are generally considered governmental documents, but the rules about reproducing them vary by state and by the archive or website from which they are obtained.
The Platform Problem: Terms of Service and Your Research
For most genealogists today, the most practically significant copyright questions are not about abstract legal principles — they are about what happens to their research when they upload it to a genealogy platform. And the answer is shaped almost entirely by that platform’s terms of service, not by copyright law alone.
Ancestry.com has terms of service that have generated significant community discussion over the years. When you upload content to Ancestry — family trees, photographs, documents, stories — you grant Ancestry a broad license to use that content. Ancestry’s terms grant the company a perpetual, sublicensable, worldwide, non-revocable[2], royalty-free license to host, store, copy, publish, distribute, and create derivative works from your uploaded content. The phrase “perpetual” and “non-revocable” have caused particular concern: once uploaded, Ancestry can use your content even if you later delete your account or the content itself.
It is important to understand what this means — and what it doesn’t. Ancestry is not acquiring your copyright. If you own the copyright to a photograph or a narrative, you retain that copyright. What Ancestry is acquiring is a broad license to use your content within (and in connection with) its services. You can still use your own photographs and narratives elsewhere. What you cannot do is demand that Ancestry stop using them, because the license you granted is irrevocable. Ancestry’s terms were updated most recently in May 2026, and the Legal Genealogist — attorney Judy G. Russell, one of the most authoritative voices on legal issues in genealogy — has provided detailed analysis of those updates that is worth reading for any researcher with significant content on the platform.
FamilySearch operates under a somewhat different model as a nonprofit. Its terms grant FamilySearch a license to use submitted content for its genealogical mission, but the terms are generally considered less aggressive than commercial platforms. FamilySearch’s collaborative tree model means that content contributed to the shared tree becomes part of a community resource rather than a proprietary database.
WikiTree, discussed in our earlier article on WikiTree, operates under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0[3] (CC BY-SA 4.0) license. Content contributed to WikiTree is available for anyone to use under those terms — which means your research can be freely used by others as long as they attribute you and share derivative works under the same license. This is a deliberately open model that some researchers find liberating and others find uncomfortable.
MyHeritage updated its terms and conditions in April 2026 to add specific restrictions on AI-related data harvesting — prohibiting the use of automated tools, bots, or AI systems to collect data from the platform. Its terms also grant MyHeritage a broad license to use content submitted by users for the operation of its services.
Photographs: A Special Case
Photographs occupy their own distinct position in genealogical copyright. The photographer — not the subject, not the person who owns the physical print — owns the copyright to a photograph. This has practical consequences that many genealogists don’t fully appreciate.
If you have a professional studio portrait of your great-grandparents from 1920, the copyright may still be held by the photography studio — or its successor — not by your family. Whether that copyright is still in force depends on when the photograph was published, whether it was registered, and a range of other factors. Photographs from before 1929 are in the public domain. Photographs taken between 1929 and 1989 require case-by-case analysis.
Scanning a physical photograph you own does not create a new copyright. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp.[4] established that a faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional work in the public domain does not create a new copyright — the scan adds no original creative expression. This means that digitized public domain photographs are themselves in the public domain, regardless of who did the scanning. However, the terms of service of the platform that provides access to those scans may contractually restrict how they can be used — even if copyright law would otherwise permit free use.
Protecting Your Own Work
Given that raw genealogical facts cannot be copyrighted, how can a researcher protect the work they have invested years in building? Several practical approaches are worth considering.
Write narratively. The most copyright-protectable form of genealogical work is a well-written family history — one with original analytical conclusions, narrative prose, and creative organization. A narrative family history earns copyright protection in its expression, even though the underlying facts remain free. The more original your expression, the stronger your copyright claim.
Register your copyright. In the United States, copyright registration with the U.S. Copyright Office is not required for copyright to exist, but it is required to sue for statutory damages[5] in an infringement case. Registration before infringement occurs (or within three months of publication) preserves the right to seek statutory damages and attorney’s fees — a significant practical advantage. Registration costs $35–$65 and can be done online at copyright.gov.
Read the terms of service before uploading. Every time you upload content to a genealogy platform, you are agreeing to that platform’s terms of service, whether or not you have read them. The license terms vary significantly between platforms. Understanding what you are agreeing to before you upload is the most important practical step available to researchers who care about retaining control over their work.
Keep backups outside the platforms. Regardless of terms of service, maintaining a complete, current copy of your research in your own software — and backing it up regularly — ensures that your data survives any platform closure, acquisition, or policy change. As our 23andMe article illustrated, corporate platforms can change hands in ways that affect user data in unexpected ways.
Give credit generously. Even where the law does not require it, citing the researchers whose work contributed to yours is a professional and ethical obligation. The genealogical community depends on a culture of credit-giving and collaboration. Researchers who take others’ compiled work without attribution damage that culture, even when what they have done is technically legal.
What This Means for Dillman Researchers
For Dillman Family Association (DFA) members who have built substantial trees, compiled family histories, or contributed research to shared platforms, the practical takeaways are straightforward. Your compiled facts are not yours to own in a copyright sense — they never were, and that is by design: facts belong to everyone. Your original expression — your written narratives, your analytical conclusions, your distinctive organization — is yours and can be protected.
Be thoughtful about where you upload your research and what license terms you accept in doing so. Review the terms of service of any platform where you have significant content, and consider whether those terms align with how you want your work to be used. If you have produced a substantial compiled family history that includes original narrative and analysis, consider registering the copyright.
For collaborative research through the Dillman DNA Project and the Dillman Name Study on WikiTree, the open licensing model of WikiTree is worth understanding explicitly before contributing: your research, once on WikiTree, is available for others to use under Creative Commons terms. For many researchers that openness is exactly the point — it is what makes collaborative genealogy work. For others, it is worth knowing in advance.
Sources
- Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991), supreme.justia.com (accessed May 2026).
- Ancestry, “Terms and Conditions,” May 2026, ancestry.com/cs/legal/termsandconditions (accessed May 2026).
- WikiTree, “Copyrights,” wikitree.com/wiki/WikiTree:Copyrights (accessed May 2026).
- Bridgeman Art Library, Ltd. v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999), en.wikipedia.org (accessed May 2026).
- U.S. Copyright Office, “Registration,” copyright.gov/registration/ (accessed May 2026).
AI Disclosure: This article was researched and written with the assistance of Claude, an AI assistant developed by Anthropic. All facts have been reviewed for accuracy, but readers are encouraged to verify information independently. This article does not constitute legal advice. Readers with specific copyright questions should consult a qualified attorney.
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