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Copyrights- Library of Congress

General Information - New filing fee - $45.00 plus Form VA or Form TX.
Copyright is a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States to the authors of “original works of author-ship,” including “pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works.”
The owner of copyright in a work has the exclusive right to make copies, to prepare derivative works, to sell or distribute copies, and to display the work publicly. Anyone else wishing to use the work in these ways must have the permission of the author or someone who has derived rights through the author.

Copyright Protection Is Automatic
Under the present copyright law, which became effective Jan. 1, 1978, a work is automatically protected by copyright when it is created. A work is created when it is “fixed” in a copy or phonorecord for the first time. Neither registration in the Copyright Office nor publication is required for copyright protection under the present law.

Advantages to Copyright Registration
There are, however, certain advantages to registration, including the establishment of a public record of the copyright claim. Copyright registration must generally be made
before an infringement suit may be brought. Timely registration may also provide a broader range of remedies in an infringement suit.

Copyright Notice
Before March 1, 1989, the use of a copyright notice was mandatory on all published works, and any work first published before that date should have carried a notice. For works first published on or after March 1, 1989, use of the copyright notice is optional.
Registration:
Information concerning registration, necessary forms and a list of materials that should be included for registration can be found at the Library of Congress websites http://www.copyright.gov/

Or can be obtained by mail:
Library of Congress
Copyright Office
101 Independence Avenue, S.E.
Washington, D.C. 20559-6000

Publication
The copyright law defines “publication” as: the distribution of copies of a work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership or by rental, lease, or lending. Offering to distribute copies to a group of persons for purposes of further distribution or public display also constitutes publication. A public display does not of itself constitute publication. A work of art that exists in only one copy, such as a painting or statue, is not regarded as published when the single existing copy is sold or offered for sale in the traditional way, for example, through an art dealer, gallery, or auction house.
A statue erected in a public place is not necessarily published. When the work is reproduced in multiple copies, such as reproductions of a painting or castings of a statue, the work is published when the reproductions are publicly distributed or offered to a group for further distribution or public display. Publication is an important concept in copyright because, among other reasons, whether a work is published or not may affect the number of copies and the type of material that must be deposited when registering the work. In addition, some works published in the United States become subject to mandatory deposit in the Library of Congress. These requirements are explained elsewhere in this circular.

Works of the Visual Arts
Copyright protects original “pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works,” which include two-dimensional and three-dimensional works of fine, graphic, and applied art. The following is a list of examples of such works:
· Advertisements, commercial prints, labels
· Artificial flowers and plants
· Artwork applied to clothing or to other useful articles
· Bumper stickers, decals, stickers
· Cartographic works, such as maps, globes, relief models
· Cartoons, comic strips
· Collages
· Dolls, toys
· Drawings, paintings, murals
· Enamel works
· Fabric, floor, and wall-covering designs
· Games, puzzles
· Greeting cards, postcards, stationery
· Holograms, computer and laser artwork
· Jewelry designs
· Models
· Mosaics
· Needlework and craft kits
· Original prints, such as engravings, etchings, serigraphs,
silk screen prints, woodblock prints
· Patterns for sewing, knitting, crochet, needlework
· Photographs, photomontages
· Posters
· Record jacket artwork or photography
· Relief and intaglio prints
· Reproductions, such as lithographs, collotypes
· Sculpture, such as carvings, ceramics, figurines,
marquettes, molds, relief sculptures
· Stained glass designs
· Stencils, cut-outs
· Technical drawings, architectural drawings or plans, blue-prints,
diagrams, mechanical drawings
· Weaving designs, lace designs, tapestries
· Copyright protection extends to the design of a building created for the use
of human beings.

Useful Articles
A “useful article” is an article having an intrinsic utilitarian function that is not merely to portray the appearance of the article or to convey information. Examples are clothing, furniture, machinery, dinnerware, and lighting fixtures. An article that is normally part of a useful article may itself be a useful article, for example, an ornamental wheel cover on a vehicle.
Copyright does not protect the mechanical or utilitarian aspects of such works of craftsmanship. It may, however, protect any pictorial, graphic, or sculptural authorship that can be identified separately from the utilitarian aspects of an object. Thus, a useful article may have features both copyrightable and uncopyrightable. For example, a carving on the back of a chair or a floral relief design on silver flatware could be protected by copyright, but the design of the chair or flatware itself could not.
Some designs of useful articles may qualify for protection under the federal patent law.

For further information, contact the Patent and Trademark Office at Commissioner
of Patents and Trademarks, Washington, D.C. 20231 or via
the Internet at http://www.uspto.gov. The telephone number
is (800) 786-9199 and the TTY number is (703) 305-
7785. The automated information line is (703) 308-4357.

Copyright in a work that portrays a useful article extends only to the artistic expression of the author of the pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work. It does not extend to the design of the article that is portrayed. For example, a drawing or photograph of an automobile or a dress design may be copyrighted, but that does not give the artist or photographer the exclusive right to make automobiles or dresses of the same design.

Mandatory Deposit for Works Published in the United States
Although a copyright registration is not required, the1976 Copyright Act establishes a mandatory deposit requirement for works published in the United States. In general, the owner of copyright or the owner of the exclusive right of publication in the work has a legal obligation to deposit in the Copyright Office within 3 months of publication in the United States two complete copies or phonorecords of the best edition. It is the responsibility of the owner of copyright or the owner of the right of first publication in the work to fulfill this mandatory deposit requirement. Failure to make the deposit can result in fines and other penalties but does not affect copyright protection.
Some categories of pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works are exempt from this requirement, and the obligation is reduced for other categories. The following works are exempt from the mandatory deposit requirement:
· Scientific and technical drawings and models
· Greeting cards, picture postcards, and stationery
· Three dimensional sculptural works, except for globes,
relief models, and similar cartographic works
· Works published only as reproduced in or on jewelry,
toys, games, textiles, packaging material, and any useful
article
· Advertising material published in connection with articles
of merchandise, works of authorship, or services
· Works first published as individual contributions to collective
works (but not the collective work as a whole)
· Works first published outside the United States and later
published without change in the United States, under
certain conditions.

Serials
For copyright purposes, serials are defined as works issued or intended to be issued in successive parts bearing numerical or chronological designations and intended to continue indefinitely. The classification “serial” includes periodicals, newspapers, magazines, bulletins, newsletters, annuals, journals, proceedings of societies, and other similar works.

Use Form SE to register a Serial
Serials should be registered on Form SE, using standard Form SE, Short Form SE, or Form SE/Group. You can obtain these forms and other forms and circulars by sending a specific request, identifying the number of forms you need, to:

Library of Congress
Copyright Office
Publications Section, LM-455
101 Independence Avenue, S.E.
Washington, D.C. 20559-6000
or by calling the Forms and Publications Hotline (202)707-
9100 and leaving a recorded message. Forms are also
available from the Copyright Office Website at
http://www.loc.gov/copyright/

A copyright registration is effective on the date the Copyright Office receives all the required elements in acceptable form, regardless of how long it then takes to process the application and mail the certificate of registration.
The time the Copyright Office requires to process an application varies; depending on the amount of material the Office is receiving.
If you apply for copyright registration, you will not receive an acknowledgment that your application has been received (the Office receives more than 600,000 applications annually), but you can expect:
· A letter or a telephone call from a Copyright Office staff
member if further information is needed or
· A certificate of registration indicating that the work has
been registered, or if the application cannot be accepted,
a letter explaining why it has been rejected.
If you want to know the date that the Copyright Office receives your material, send it by registered or certified mail and request a return receipt.
If you plan to register many successive claims to copyright, you may wish to open a deposit account in the Copyright Office from which the fee for each registration and other services may be paid.

Authorship

Copyright Begins With the Author at Creation
At the time an original work is created in fixed form, copyright is automatically secured. At that moment, all the rights in that copyright belong to the author of the work. Those rights remain with the author unless the author specifically transfers them, in writing, to someone else. Ownership of the rights can change, but the author of the work remains the same regardless of who subsequently owns the rights.
Work Made for Hire
Ordinarily, the person who actually creates the work is considered the author. However, the copyright law provides that in the case of a “work made for hire,” the employer is the “author” of the work and is therefore the initial owner of copyright unless the parties have expressly agreed otherwise.
A “work made for hire” is either:
· “A work prepared by an employee within the scope of
his or her employment,” or
· Under certain conditions as defined by the copyright
law (section 101), a “specially ordered or commissioned
work” where the parties have agreed in writing that the
commissioned work shall be considered a “work made for
hire.” This category includes works commissioned for
use as contributions to collective works.
Collective Works
Most serials are collective works in which a number of contributions, constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective whole. Two categories of authorship are inherent in the creation of collective works:
· Authorship of the collective work as a whole, and
· Authorship of the individual contributions to the collective
work.
Authorship of the collective work as a whole includes the elements of revising, editing, compiling, and similar authorship that went into putting the work into final form.
The author of a serial issue as a whole is sometimes an individual person. More typically, however, the author is the organization (corporation, society, club) that directed the preparation of the entire serial issue as a “work made for hire.” In this case, the employer’s authorship includes not only the collective authorship (described above) but also any individual contributions that employees of the employer prepare while working within the scope of their employment.

The Claimant and the extent of the Claim
The copyright claimant is the person, organization, or legal entity authorized to claim copyright in the serial issue. The claimant is the author or the person or organization to whom all rights have been transferred.
The claimant registering a serial may claim copyright not only in the collective-work authorship for which the claimant is responsible but also in any independently authored contributions in which all rights have been transferred to the claimant by the contributors.
If the serial issue includes any independently authored contributions in which all rights have not been transferred by the contributor to the claimant for the serial issue as a whole, those contributions are not included in the claim being registered, because the claimant in these contributions is different from the claimant in the entire serial issue.
A separately authored contribution can, however, be registered for copyright independently. To register such a contribution, the contributor should file a separate claim using Form TX or other appropriate application form.

International Copyright
There is no such thing as an “international copyright” that will automatically protect an author’s writings throughout the world. Protection against unauthorized use in a particular country basically depends on the national laws of that country. However, most countries offer protection to foreign works under certain conditions that have been greatly simplified by international copyright treaties and conventions. There are two principal international copyright conventions, the Berne Union for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Property (Berne Convention) and the Universal Copyright Convention (UCC).
The United States became a member of the Berne Convention on March 1, 1989. It has been a member of the UCC since September 16, 1955. Generally, the works of an author who is a national or domiciliary of a country that is a member of these treaties or works first published in a member country or published within 30 days of first publication in a Berne Union country may claim protection under them. There are no formal requirements in the Berne Convention. Under the UCC, any formality in a national law may be satisfied by the use of a notice of copyright in the form and position specified in the UCC. A UCC notice should consist of the symbol © ( C in a circle) accompanied by the year of first publication and the name of the copyright proprietor (example: © 1995 John Doe). This notice must be placed in such manner and location as to give reasonable notice of the claim to copyright. Since the Berne Convention prohibits formal requirements that affect the “exercise and enjoyment” of the copyright, the United States changed its law on March 1, 1989 to make the use of a copyright notice optional. U.S. law however, still provides certain advantages for use of a copyright notice; for example, the use of a copyright notice can defeat a defense of “innocent infringement.”
Even if the work cannot be brought under an international convention, protection may be available in other countries by virtue of a bilateral agreement between the U.S. and other countries or under specific provision of a country’s national laws. (See generally
Circular 38a International Copyright Relations of the United States.)
An author who wishes copyright protection for his or her work in a particular country should first determine the extent of protection available to works of foreign authors in that country. If possible, this should be done before the work is published anywhere, because protection may depend on the facts existing at the time of first publication.
There are some countries that offer little or no copyright protection to any foreign works. For current information on the requirements and protection provided by other countries, it may be advisable to consult an expert familiar with foreign copyright laws.
The U.S. Copyright Office is not permitted to recommend agents or attorneys or to give legal advice on foreign laws.

All above information is available through the USPTO and Library of Congress
Source: The United States Library of Congress

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