The following is a guest post by Jalyce Mangum, attorney-advisor, Office of the General Counsel.
Today, the Copyright Office releases a public draft of the latest update to the Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices. As both a technical manual for the Office’s staff, as well as a guidebook for authors, copyright licensees, lawyers, scholars, the courts, and members of the public, the Compendium addresses fundamental principles of copyright law, routine questions about accessing the Office’s public services, and the policies and procedures the Office uses in the course of conducting business.
The Copyright Office is constantly reviewing its practices to keep pace with the ever-evolving copyright landscape. As a result, the Compendium is a living document that will be updated as needed to capture ongoing changes to regulations and practices.
In this public draft, the Office has updated the Compendium to reflect the Supreme Court’s 2017 decision in Star Athletica, LLC v. Varsity Brands, Inc., the Office’s recently completed rulemakings, and the technical upgrades made to the electronic registration system, among other things.
As reported here, the Star Athletica decision established a single standard for determining the extent to which copyright protects art applied on or incorporated into cheerleader uniforms, hookahs, hubcaps, crash-test dummies, and the like. Based on the decision, the public draft provides new guidance for claims involving useful articles, as well as claims involving works of artistic craftsmanship, models, technical drawings, and other works of the visual arts.
In addition, the Office updated the Compendium to reflect rulemakings it has completed since the Compendium was last revised on September 29, 2017. In the last seventeen months, the Office has issued final rules establishing new group registration options for unpublished works and unpublished photographs and modifying group registration options for published photographs, serials, newspapers, and newsletter issues. The Office has also set new deposit requirements for literary monographs, printed music, and photographic databases, and made technical amendments to the regulation governing copyright notice. The public draft incorporates all of these changes, as well as updates practices recently implemented by the Office of Registration Policy & Practice clarifying how and when the Office will communicate with applicants, when it will attempt to correct deficiencies in the application, when it will register a claim with an annotation, and when it will refuse registration.
In addition to its final rules, the Office recently issued proposals to amend its regulations regarding architectural works and to establish a group registration option for short online literary works. These amendments will be included in the final version of the Compendium if they are finalized before this update goes into effect. The final version will also be updated to reflect the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Fourth Estate v. Wall-Street.com.
The public draft also reflects upgrades the Office has made to our electronic registration system. As announced here, the Office released a new and improved Single Application modifying certain aspects of the online application. Coupled with the modifications to the Single Application, the Office expanded the unique identifiers that may be provided in an application for registration, adding ISMN, ISWC, and ISTC numbers, among others. The Office also added a feature to block unacceptable file types.
Now that the Office has released its public draft, we welcome your comments. The commenting period will be open until May 14, 2019. The Office depends on your participation to make the Compendium a helpful and relevant resource. The Office will carefully review and consider your comments and release a final version this fall.
To discuss these updates and answer questions about the public draft, the Office will host a webinar on April 10, 2019, at 2:00 pm ET. To register for this event, please click here.
Comments (2)
It occurs to me this is the perfect place to ask this question – – there’s a library of Congress have any paper or article addressing those authors who are writing personal memoirs or personal histories. Daily I meet people like myself who are working on their first book having never been published before who want to make use of copyright free photographs and maps and ephemera and possibly articles from papers within history or memoirs that they are writing. It’s a daunting task trying to find a good article or booklet giving us an idea of when something is appropriate to use without violating someone’s copyright. I hope you can help me find just such a book or article May I suggest that you also send a copy to libraries in groups who serve us much like the genealogy division of the New York public library? Or perhaps to all the various different digital collections that are online and serving that kind of public. I’m sure they have many readers who would want to have this information available to them in a format they can easily read and understand And make good use of
Thanks for your question. There are many library, museum, history, and photography websites that include information about copyright ownership and rights-clearance. The Library of Congress offers many digital items that are free to use and reuse. Check out Free to Use and Reuse sets.