by Sandra Fikes

Created on: March 09, 2010

The Berne Convention (http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/overview.h tml#2) safeguards the work of artists by providing an automatic copyrighted as soon as a work has been fixed in some material form, however, there are times when it is wise to take a further step to safeguard your work by registering the copyright with the Copyright Office.

What do you gain by choosing to register your copyright?

♦ Registration gives you a public record of your work being copyrighted and provides you with a certificate of copyright registration. Invaluable if you ever find yourself in need of defending your work in a copyright infringement case. In fact, copyright registration is necessary before you can file an infringement suit for work originating in the United States.

♦ Should you find yourself involved in a copyright infringement case, and you have obtained your copyright registration before the case or within three months of publication, then you will be eligible to collect statutory damages and attorney's fees in any court proceedings. Without such prior or early registration, you will only be eligible for an award of actual damages and lost profits.

♦ If your work is registered within five years of publication, then the copyright registration is considered by the court as prima facie evidence – meaning it will suffice as proof of fact unless overcome by other evidence.

♦ Registered copyrighted work can be recorded with the U. S. Customs Office to help protect the copyright owner in the event of importation of infringing materials. For more information you should refer to Chapter 17 of the NAFTA Intellectual Property (http://tech.mit.edu/Bulletins/Nafta/17.intellect)

 Given all that a copyright registration can do for you, there are arguably strong reasons for spending the $35¹ fee for copyrighting your work if there is any possibility you might one day need to defend your work against copyright infringement.

Preregistration

 In addition to basic registration, you might also consider if you want to preregister your work with the copyright office if you have something that might be subject to pre-release copyright infringement. If registration is not for every work, then preregistration is for the rare gem of work. And even then, preregistration is only available for a select group of works, all of which must be unfinished at the time of preregistration and be of high risk for copyright infringement before they are released. Work must be unpublished but in the process of being prepared for tither physical or digital commercial distribution and requires a nonrefundable $115 filing fee. Note that preregistration is NOT a substitution for registration of a copyright, it simply allows the holder of the preregistered copyright to take action in the event of infringement prior to authorized commercial distribution and full registration. See http://www.copyright.gov/prereg/ for more information on preregistration.

When NOT to register your work

 Copyright registration and the deposit copies submitted with the registration become public record, and as such there are times when even the Copyright Office advises against registration of copyright. Notably is in the case of formulas or recipes where there is some form of secret ingredient that would be revealed as public record as a result of the registration. For more information on this see Fact Sheet FL-122 Recipes. http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl122.pdf

(¹ current fee via the Electronic Copyright Office at the time of this writing)

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