Usually, determining whether something can be copyrighted is easy. Books, movies, and songs are copyrightable. Artistic drawings, paintings and photographs are also copyrightable. When you start moving towards more technical works and drawings, it can become a little trickier. Generally speaking, drawings, photographs, and other two-dimensional and three-dimensional expressions that visually depict three-dimensional objects are copyrightable. At the Us Trademark Service, we can help you copyright your:

• Written work such as fiction, nonfiction, poetry, textbooks, reference works or articles
• Directories or catalogs, advertising copy
• Computer programs
• Website or online materials
• Photograph
• Art Work
• Maps
• Technical Drawings
• Recorded performance of music or sound
• Written music & Lyrics, Screenplay or script
• A Choreographic work
• A recorded score for a movie or play
• Feature film, documentary film, animated film, television show, video, or other Audi-Visual Work

We are unable to assist you with copyrighting your at this time due to the fact that electronic filing is not permitted by the US Copyright Office. One category of issues is those of serials; another is those of newspapers; and a third is those of newsletters.

Any combination of words, phrases, symbols, or designs used to identify a product's origin can be protected by trademark law. Various products and services have their own unique identities, and these brand markings help consumers identify them. Head over to our trademark FAQ if you want to know more. Poetry, novels, movies, songs, computer programs, and architectural plans are all examples of creative, literary, dramatic, and musical works that are protected by copyright. 'Any new and useful process, machine, manufacture or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof' is what patent law often means when it comes to inventions, whether they're functional or not.The exclusive right to produce or use the processes covered by a patent is granted to the owner for a period of twenty years beginning on the earliest priority date. With regular upkeep, a trademark has the potential to endure indefinitely. As we'll see later, copyrights typically remain in effect for seventy years plus the author's lifetime.

It is not necessary to register your work in order to be given copyright in the United States; the law grants copyright the moment you create it. Assuming you put any thought and imagination into your work, you have the right to claim it and have it protected. The catch is that your protection isn't full until you register; otherwise, you won't be able to use American courts to assert your rights.

You can get copyright protection without registering your work, however there are a lot of extra benefits to registering, such as:

• The ability to file a lawsuit: If your work is not registered with the copyright office, you cannot file suit for copyright infringement.
• Statutory damages: If not timely filed, you cannot sue for statutory damages. You would therefore have to prove that someone’s copying of your work caused you actual damages that you can calculate and tie to the infringement of the other person. (more on this below)
• Protection from imported infringing copies: Registration also allows you to record the registration with the U.S. Customs Service for protection against the importation of infringing copies.
• Firm claim of ownership: Registration makes it more difficult for infringers to argue that they were unaware of their infringement as it acts as a notice to everyone that you own the copyright.
• Image of Establishment: In some industries (such as film scripts), registration of copyright is a prerequisite to get some people (like agents) to take you seriously.

If you timely file your copyright, U.S. law allows you to recover statutory damages. Sometimes, it is difficult to directly tie the infringement of your work to a lost profit and therefore, you may want to seek statutory damages instead. Other times, the actual damage caused by the infringement is small, but statutory damages make the pursuit of a lawsuit more economically viable.In the U.S., statutory damages range between $750 and $30,000 per infringed work in the discretion of the judge. If you can show “willful” infringement by the defendant, then you may be able to recover up to $150,000 per work. Meanwhile, if the defendant can prove they are an “innocent infringer”, then the court may reduce the statutory damage to as low as $200 per work.To be able to recover statutory damages, you have to register your work with the U.S. Copyright Office prior to infringement or within three months of publication.

Generally speaking, the owner of a copyright has the right to do the following:

• Reproduce copies of the work
• Prepare derivative works
• Distribute copies
• Perform the work publicly either in person or recorded
• Display the work publicly

To prove a copyright infringement, a copyright owner must establish:

• The ownership of a valid copyright
• Factual copying: Factual copying can by proved by direct or circumstantial evidence. To make a circumstantial claim, the copyright owner must prove that (1) the infringer had access to the copyrighted work before creation of the infringing work and (2) the works contain similarities that are probative of copying.
• Substantial similarity: The copyright owner must show that the copyrighted expressions in the two works are sufficiently alike that the copyright to the original work has been infringed.

In most cases, a copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years. If the author of the work died in 2070, then the copyright, in most situations, would last until 2140. For works made for hire, and for anonymous and pseudonymous works, the duration of copyright is 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation (whichever is shorter).

The three-dimensional object portrayed in a design may be exempt from copyright laws, but this does not apply to drawings or designs themselves. Put another way, you could be able to copyright a chair sketch, but in practice, copyright law wouldn't let you prohibit anyone from duplicating the real thing. A 'useful article' like the chair is exempt from copyright regulations.

Copyright law defines a compilation as a “a work formed by the collection and assembling of preexisting materials or of data that are selected, coordinated, or arranged in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship.” In other words, it could be a unique way a collection of previously produced stories or songs is arranged in a video, or a group of essays compiled together by several writers to be sold as a single book.

What copyright law refers to as a collection or 'group registration of unpublished works' allows you to occasionally register multiple works in one application that safeguards each unique work. In the past, this was the case with albums, collections of papers or essays, or collections of images that were all made by the same artist. If you fulfill the following conditions, you are eligible to submit a copyright registration for a 'collection':

• The work must be unpublished and a maximum of 10 works of a similar type of copyright may be submitted per application. For example: 10 poems, 10 photographs, 10 paintings, or 10 audio recordings can be submitted in a single application.
• The elements are assembled in an orderly form.
• Provide a title for each work and submit a separate digital copy of each in a separate digital file.
• You are both the author of the individual elements and the collection as a whole.
• All of the elements are by the same author, or the same co-authors. In addition, the author and claimant for each work must be the same person or organization.
• They are not works made for hire. For works for hire, you can only submit one work per application.

The application for copyright will need you to name the 'author' of the work. Anyone who is directly or indirectly responsible for the work's creation is referred to as the 'author' and the author immediately owns any copyright in the work. When one individual made and is responsible for anything, which is usually the case, then it's straightforward to figure out. Things could get trickier when someone is being paid to make something or when there is an employment relationship. An item is considered a 'work made for hire' under copyright laws. Copyright does not automatically transfer to you when you pay someone to do an artwork, write a software, or build a website. If you want to claim ownership of someone else's work, it has to be a 'work for hire,' meaning that the employee generated it while on the clock. This just indicates that they were performing an essential function of their job description by making the work in question. This would include the Google coder and the Pixar artist. However, how about service providers? A written contract typically assigns the copyright or intellectual property rights to the party paying for the creation when hiring outside contractors. This ensures that the party paying for the creation owns the copyright. What constitutes a 'work made for hire' according to Section 101 of the Copyright Act is as follows: (1) an employee's work done as part of their job duties; or (2) a specially ordered or commissioned piece of work, provided that the parties involved agree in writing that it should be deemed as such.

If your application allows for electronic submission, we will use that functionality. The types of things eligible for electronic submission include:

• Unpublished works
• Work published only electronically
• Published work for which the deposit requirement is identifying material: This usually applies to descriptions of three-dimensional works and would include pictures of the work or similar two-dimensional reproductions or renderings of the work.
• Published work for which there are special agreements requiring a hard-copy deposit to be sent separately to the Library of Congress

For works where a hard-copy is required, you will be provided a mailing label to affix to your package and mailing instructions from us. NOTE THAT YOU WILL NOT GET BACK THE SUBMISSIONS YOU PROVIDE TO THE U.S. COPYRIGHT OFFICE.

Several different parts of a song can be copyrighted. The lyrics can be copyrighted separate and apart from the composition. The copyrights can, and often do, belong to different people. The recorded version of a song can also be copyrighted with the rights belonging, at least in part, to the performer who is recording the song. The Us Trademark Service can help with one or all of these aspects.