With this series of articles I?m not intending to make a full excursus on Copyright registration since there are already many different official and non official guides on that.
Below just a collection of links and resources to start up your education process on the procedure to register the Copyrights of your photographs in the USA.
Copyright registration screenshot
- The first step is to read as much as you can about it, not only our articles, but also other guides on the web.
- The single most important tip I would have liked to receive before starting the whole process, is that it is possible in case you have any doubts, to contact directly the Copyright Information office and pose your questions. They are really helpful and knowledgeable and usually you get your answers within 3-5 days.
When communicating with the Copyright Information office be careful to the language you are using: legally speaking a Photograph is different than an image, a group is different than a collection and so on.
They are not supposed to give you advice about legal matters (only about rules and procedures): in case they can?t answer to something you might want to try with Avvo, an online service with a basic free legal consultation. - The most complete document you can read about Copyright Registration is the Compendium III. It is extremely long, but you can select just he sections of your interest. http://www.copyright.gov/comp3/docs/compendium.pdf
- On this link instead an official tutorial on the standard online procedure to register copyrights.
http://www.copyright.gov/eco/eco-tutorial-standard.pdfI was focused on registering groups of published photos: the procedure is slightly different, but almost identical, so it?s still a good way to get comfortable with it. - Another tutorial with screenshots of the standard procedure
http://tomoscott.com/journal/2015/11/4/registering-your-photos-with-the-us-copyright-office - More on Statutory damages
http://www.ipinbrief.com/ending-confusion-re-statutory-damages-i/ - Second part of the previous article on Statutory damages
http://www.ipinbrief.com/ending-confusion-statutory-damages-ii/ - Question about group registration and single registration on Avvo
https://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/in-a-copyright-infringement-matter--are-you-awarde-589846.html - More on the possibility of registering an unlimited number of photos as a group of published photographs
http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2005/70fr15587.html
Many other links and resource I used myself, are not available anymore online, since they are constantly updated.
After having made yourself comfortable with the general procedure and content, you might want to know more about registering a group of published photographs and how I registered over 40.000 photos copyright in one single application and fee and the tools I used.
Davide Vadalà
