Registration
Although the Copyright Act affords you protection just for creating your work
and reducing it to a tangible form, in many cases it is desirable to officially
register your works with the U.S. Copyright Office. The registration process is
fairly straightforward, the fees are not exorbitant, but be forewarned that the
certificate of copyright that you will receive from the Copyright Office is not
suitable for framing.
Reasons
to Register
Copyright protection attaches immediately and automatically upon fixation
(reduction to a tangible form) of the work in question. So, why fork over the
bucks and go to the trouble of filing a federal copyright registration? There
are two fundamental answers:
-
ability to sue; and
-
statutory damages.
Although copyright attaches upon fixation, you cannot actually sue someone for
infringing your copyright until you have registered your work with the
Copyright Office. And if you register your work within three months from the
date of first publication, or at least prior to the date of infringement, you
can collect statutory damages from the infringer. Otherwise, you are stuck with
actual damages, which depending upon the situation, may be only nominal.
Dangers of
Non-Registration
To see how all of this plays out, assume that this Web page has not been
registered. As we know, this page is in tangible form, and is therefore
protected by copyright. If someone from The Plagiarism Website comes and copies
this page verbatim and places it on that Website, then my copyright has been
infringed. In order to sue The Plagiarism Website for copyright infringement, I
would have to register this web page with the copyright office. If I was in a
hurry to file the lawsuit, I would have to pay an additional $200 fee to
expedite the application.
Assuming that The Plagiarism Website didn't have any valid defense such as
fair use, then I would be able to collect my losses, plus any profits that The
Plagiarism Website accrued by virtue of the infringement. But in this case,
neither The Copyright Website nor The Plagiarism Website are operated for
profit. Consequently, I would end up paying attorneys fees for my trouble.
However, if I had registered this page within three months of its first
publication, then I would be able to recover statutory damages in lieu of my
virtually non-existent actual damages. Statutory damages can be awarded up to
$100,000, plus attorney fees and court costs, depending upon the nature and
malevolence of the infringement. As you can see, this would certainly affect
your decision making process when deciding whether to sue someone for copyright
infringement.