Contrary to the almost indefatigable layman assumption that entertainment lawyers like myself hear all the time, one is not required to register a copyright in one’s work with the US Copyright Office (USCO). at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC (or elsewhere) as a condition precedent to US copyright protection. In other words, the New York-based author in Chelsea, for example, already has copyright protection in his or her finished original work of authority, under US federal law, just as soon as the work is reduced to a tangible medium of expression in New York. That copyright protection is automatic and inherent to the Chelsea-based New York auteur immediately, your entertainment lawyer will opine.
So when the New York entertainment lawyer hears the Chelsea-based New York writer say, “I ‘copyrighted’ my novel by registering it with the Library of Congress and Copyright Office in Washington, DC”, the writer is generally operating under the wrong concept. set of geographic and legal assumptions. It is up to the show lawyers to correct those assumptions. This is a particularly difficult myth to debunk, because members of Congress, case law writers and editors, and some jurisprudence scholars have also been known to use “copyright” as a verb form. When I listen to it, it sounds to me like nails on a blackboard.
So, “No,” the New York entertainment lawyer replies to the New York writer in Chelsea, “you already had automatic copyright protection on your work as soon as you wrote the text, as soon as you reduced your vision to a ‘tangible'”. medium of expression.” Your act of mailing it from a post office on the West Side of Manhattan in New York City, to Washington, DC, is not what gave rise to the copyright. Rather, your prior act of crystallizing it into a tangible medium here in downtown West Side New York (from pen to paper, or keystroke to hard drive) is what gave birth to the copyright of your work.Probably should be avoided altogether, certainly be avoided as synonyms for “record” or “archive,” specifically to avoid that kind of secular confusion. After all, if the screenwriter of Chelsea in New York[sic] his or her work by only mailing it to Washington DC on Friday morning, that would imply that there was no copyright in the work yet when he or she completed the final draft, hit the “Save” button on their keyboard, and printed it out in the form printed at its Chelsea headquarters in Manhattan on the previous Thursday night, and that conclusion would be legally incorrect. In that fact pattern, the entertainment lawyer opines, the copyright existed and was owned by the screenwriter as of Thursday night based on events that occurred in downtown New York’s West Side.
The copyright registration process in the US is just a formality afterward, though entertainment lawyers (from New York, and yes, even elsewhere like Hollywood) often drive for their clients. In other words, the work is already copyrighted before the work is mailed from New York or any other city to the US Copyright Office and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC Yes , US copyright registration provides certain advantages thereafter over unregistered works, as your entertainment lawyer will tell you. But copyright registration is not itself a prerequisite for copyright protection. Copyright protection comes first. Copyright filing comes second.
After all, the USCO form specifically asks the filer when (what year) their work was completed. In theory, you could apply in 2011 for a work completed in 2006. In that case, the copyright would have existed as of 2006.
Under US Copyright Law (which can be found in various places on the Internet at 17 United States Code [U.S.C.] Section 101 et seq.), the author of an original and protectable work automatically owns a copyright in that work as soon as the work is reduced to a “tangible medium of expression”. Not later.
The New York choreographer on Manhattan’s West Side improvises a new series of dance steps for her students, fleeting, mid-air, but she does not own the copyright to these moves or their performance or performance. However, by the time you write down the original dance steps using a detailed graph chart, or videotape yourself performing them in your New York studio, perhaps at the suggestion of your entertainment lawyer, then you may have an opportunity to sue. any copyrighted work. The key, again, is the reduction of the work to a fixed medium. In fact, it’s possible she owns the copyright to that material without interacting with Washington, DC, though her entertainment lawyer will tell you it would be a good idea to mail a submission to DC if original work is perceived. authorship. have some economic or other long-term value.
And this makes sense. Look at it from a copyright enforcement perspective: from the perspective of a New York entertainment trial lawyer trying to prove or disprove copyright infringement in a downtown law court at 500 Pearl Street . How difficult would be the job of a federal judge or jury in a US copyright infringement lawsuit in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York, or an examiner for the Copyright Office? in Washington, DC, if the US Congress allowed us all to claim copyright in the incipient and evanescent? Courts in New York and, indeed, across the country would be inundated with strike lawsuits and other spurious copyright claims, perhaps more often brought by pro se litigants rather than their entertainment attorneys, if there were any. . So Congress won’t let us get away with it. Congress requires reduction to a “tangible medium of expression” as a precondition for copyright protection. But no, Congress does not require copyright registration as a precondition for copyright ownership itself; rather, copyright registration at or around the time of creation is at the discretion of the copyright owner. Congress only requires copyright registration as a precondition for filing a copyright infringement lawsuit, something your litigating entertainment attorney won’t miss when reviewing the pre-filing statute in federal court.
Yes, your entertainment lawyer will tell you that copyrighting a work after it occurs provides certain strategic advantages, relative to unregistered works. Copyright registration notifies those of us in New York and in California, USA and the rest of the world, at least constructively, that the copyright claimant believes that it owns the copyright to that registered work. Practically speaking, copyright registration creates the possibility for another company, including your own entertainment lawyer conducting a copyright search, to “select” (i.e., view or notify) the previously registered work. , when that company or its entertainment attorney conducts a thorough professional (or even cursory and informal) eye search of the public records of the Washington, DC-based US Copyright Office. Most movie studios and their entertainment lawyers conduct extensive copyright searches as a matter of course, for example, before settling on an author’s literary work.
As discussed above, whether you live in New York, Los Angeles, or elsewhere, copyright registration with the US Copyright Office Federal Court. For this reason, in practice, individuals and companies and their entertainment attorneys have been known to occasionally register their copyrights days, or even hours, paying an emergency rush filing fee using a Fed Ex from New York to DC. , before suing for copyright. violation in federal court. Of course, the entertainment lawyer will tell you that it is better to register the work at an earlier stage. Filing a copyright infringement lawsuit based on a USCO copyright registration in turn allows the entertainment attorney litigant to recover certain types of damages awarded under US Copyright Law. such as “statutory” damages and plaintiffs’ attorneys’ fees. These types of damages would not be available to the copyright plaintiff if her entertainment attorney sued using a different common law theory. A copyright registration may also provide advantages in terms of certain international copyright protections.
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