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The Geography of Copyright Registrations: A Look at How Registration Differs Across the Country

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In the background of the cover art is a dessert and a road. Text to the left of the image of the report is text that reads, "A Copyright: Creativity at Work Blog Post, The Geography of Copyright Registrations: A Look at How Registration Differs Across the Country."
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On September 11, the U.S. Copyright Office released a report, The Geography of Copyright Registrations. The report examines the geographic distribution of copyright claims registered by individuals and organizations within the United States using a dataset compiled by the Office of the Chief Economist. The purpose of this report is to better recognize how patterns of registration differ across the country. Illuminating these patterns helps provide a better understanding of how, where, and by whom the U.S. copyright system is used, and it helps identify the socioeconomic factors that influence creative and innovative activity.  

The report analyzes registrations for the eight types of works most frequently registered between 2009 and 2022: visual art works, computer programs, dramatic works, literary works, musical works, motion pictures, serials, and sound recordings. 

First, the report found that copyright registrations are clustered in different parts of the country. This geographic clustering is consistent with urban economic literature that describes how people and firms become more productive when they locate close to one another because they benefit from exchanging knowledge and resources amongst themselves. These effects are known to be especially relevant for the information industries, which produce works that can be registered. Most copyright registrations originate from five metropolitan areas: New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and Chicago. Second, copyright registration data suggests that regions specialize in different types of creative works.  

  • Registrants in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states register the most literary works.  
  • Registrants in California are more likely to specialize in film and dramatic works.  
  • Registrants in the South are more likely to specialize in musical works. 

Third, some areas have a high volume of registrations simply because of their large populations. When controlling for population, numerous locations emerge where individuals, companies, or universities are registering high concentrations of creative works. Examples in the study include music publishers in small towns, a consumer product firm registering claims related to their online advertising and social media content, trade associations protecting their online databases, and independent artists on the outskirts of large cities.

Bar chart showing the, "Ten Areas with Highest Mean Annual Registrations per 100,000 Population"

As U.S. Copyright Office statistician Michael Palmedo noted in a recent Federal News Network interview 

“There were definitely some surprises in the data. To create this report, we spent a lot of time poring over registration data that hadn’t gotten as much attention because the Office of the Chief Economist is a relatively new part of the Copyright Office. But when we looked at the data, a bunch of unexpected things stood out.  For instance, there is a large number of advertisements registered as artistic works, which doesn’t mean that most firms register copyrights on their ads, but many do. We also saw a lot of registrations for artworks that were actually for clothing and textiles, both in Los Angeles and New York City. These cities each have large textile and garment industries which use copyright systems to protect their designs. This shows that registration of artworks is important not just for artists, but for other types of businesses. Finally, it was fun to see all these neat little areas that you wouldn’t think of as having really vibrant, creative sectors that actually do – these are small towns with a few active registrants like Winona, Minnesota, for instance. There’s a lot of musical works being registered there, and I never would have thought of that if it wasn’t for this exercise of really poring through the data.” 

A forthcoming report builds on these findings, by exploring the demographics of copyright registrations in the United States. The Office will use findings from reports like these to focus outreach and education programs and initiatives in furtherance of its goals to enhance the use of data and to make the copyright system as understandable and accessible to as many people as possible.  

Find more information about the Copyright Office’s economic research agenda, published and future reports, and publicly available research datasets on the Economic Research webpage

Comments (3)

  1. It’s so good to be updated on the different types of Copyright information. Thank You for the update, please continue to inform us of the changes to our copyrights.

  2. Hurray for the Office of the Chief Economist! I am thrilled to see that my small state of Vermont made the top 10 per 100,000 registrations.

  3. Interesting to see the various hubs of creativity scattered throughout the U.S. Not all of them are in major cities or counties.

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