Copyrights Purposes and Advantages of Registration

Purposes and Advantages of Registration:

Under the current copyright law, a work of authorship is protected by copyright from the moment it is created, provided that the work is original and has been fixed in a tangible medium of expression. See 17 U.S.C. §§ 102(a), 408(a). Although registration is not required for a work to be protected by copyright, it does provide several important benefits:

• A registration creates a public record that includes key facts relating to the authorship and ownership of the claimed work, as well as information about the work, such as title, year of creation, date of publication (if any), and the type of authorship that the work contains (e.g., photographs, text, sound recordings).
• Registration (or a refusal to register) is a prerequisite to filing a lawsuit for copyright infringement involving a U.S. work. See 17 U.S.C. § 411(a); see also Petrella v. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc., 132 S. Ct. 1962, 1977 (2014) (“Although registration is ‘permissive,’ both the certificate and the original work must be on file with the Copyright Office before a copyright owner can sue for infringement.”); Alaska Stock, LLC. v. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co., 747 F.3d 673, 678 (9th Cir. 2014) (“Though an owner has property rights without registration, he needs to register the copyright to sue for infringement.”).
• To claim statutory damages or attorney’s fees in a copyright infringement lawsuit, a work must be registered before the infringement began or within
three months after the first publication of the work. See 17 U.S.C. §§ 412(c), 504, 505.
• A registration constitutes prima facie evidence of the validity of the copyright and the facts stated in the certificate of registration, but only if the work is registered before or within five years after the work is first published.
• A registration provides information to prospective licensees, such as the name and address for obtaining permission to use the work.
• A document that has been recorded with the U.S. Copyright Office may provide constructive notice of the facts stated therein, but only if the document specifically identifies a work of authorship and only if that work has been registered. See 17 U.S.C. § 205(c)(1)-(2).
• The deposit copy(ies) submitted with an application for registration of a published work may satisfy the mandatory deposit requirement, provided that
the applicant submitted the best edition of the work. See 17 U.S.C. §§ 407, 408(b).
• A registration is necessary to secure the full benefits of a preregistration that has been issued by the U.S. Copyright Office. See 17 U.S.C. § 408(f)(3).
• The U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service may seize foreign pirated copies of a copyright owner’s work, provided that the work has been registered with the U.S. Copyright Office and the certificate of registration has been recorded with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Service.
• A registration is required to claim royalties under the compulsory license for making and distributing phonorecords. See 17 U.S.C. § 115(c)(1).

Source: Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices, Third Edition. U.S. Copyright Office, August 19, 2014.

Click Here for More Information