As soon as you write an article or snap a photograph, you have a copyright. No publication or registration in the Copyright Office is required. So, why bother registering copyrights at all? The answer is that registration provides exceptional and cost-effective protection to authors and photographers.
A copyright registration alone can establish an author’s ownership of a certain work and the date of creation. A common, but false myth is that mailing a self-addressed package containing a work can be used prove ownership and date of creation. This “poor man’s copyright” is not at all effective but it is aptly named - it truly is a “poor substitute” for a proper registration.
If someone infringes your work, a copyright registration is truly invaluable. A timely registration provides you with a number of powerful tools should you need to go to court. The first is statutory damages, a unique form of compensation that can be awarded to a copyright holder even in the absence of proof that the infringement caused monetary damage to the copyright holder or that the infringer profited from the infringement. Not infrequently, a meritorious lawsuit is a paper tiger because neither damages nor profits can be proven – and in these cases statutory damages can save the day.
The second powerful tool copyright registration provides a copyright holder is entitlement to attorneys’ fees from the infringer. There is only one thing infringers hate more than paying their attorneys’ bills – paying someone else’s attorneys’ bills. This prospect provides ample incentive to settle quickly.
In order to enjoy all the full benefit of registration, however, it must be timely, which means that the work must be registered either before the infringement commences or within a three month window after the article is first published.
How to register nearly all your articles for about $180 a year
The most cost effective way to ensure that your work is protected is to file a group registration for all the articles and/or photographs you publish in a ten week cycle. The ten week cycle is the three month registration window minus two weeks for the application to reach the Copyright Office by mail. A single registration is $45, but using the group registration form (GR/CP) an applicant may list a number of articles. By filing every ten weeks, you’ll ensure that registration is made within the three month window for all your work. The total cost is about $180 per year and the benefits are well worth it.
Group registration can be done easily and inexpensively using the following four steps:
1) Select either form TX (for text) or VA (for photographs). Both forms are available on the Copyright Office’s website. Which form should you use for an article with photographs? If the text predominates, use TX; if the pictures predominate, use VA. If your work contains both text and photographs and you are claiming both, indicate in the description of the work that you are claiming both elements. Do not fill out the portions related to any specific work- place that information on the GR/CP.
2) Complete group registration form GR/CP, also available on the Copyright Office’s website. It is best to register every ten weeks, but you may go back and list articles published within the previous twelve month period (you may wish to do this for the first GR/CP you file). The articles do not have to be published in the same calendar year. Note that the author must be the same individual for all the articles. Thus, if one of the articles was written jointly with another author, it may not be registered with the others.
3) Prepare your deposit materials. The deposit is the work that is being registered. For articles published in a periodical such as a magazine or newspaper you may submit a photocopy of the work as it was published.
4) Make a $45 check for payment to “Register of Copyrights.”
© 2007 Anthony N. Elia
