Page:Compendium of US Copyright Office Practices (1973).pdf/232

7.1.3

Authors and Proprietors(cont'd)

III.

Posthumous work. In the case of a posthumous work, it is not clear whose citizenship should determine the eligibility for copyright. It is the policy of the Copyright Office in such cases to request the applicant to state not only the citizenship of the deceased author at the time of his death but also the citizenship and (where appropriate) the domicile of the copyright claimant. Registration may be made where either the deceased author or the copyright claimant meets the citizenship and domicile require­ments. (See Supplementary Practice No. 39.)

7.1.4

Time as of which Status of Author is Determined. It is the citizenship (or domicile) of the author at the time of first publication of the work that determines its copyrightability; or, if the work is being registered in unpublished form, the citizenship or domicile of the author on the date the application is submitted is the deciding factor. Changes in the author's status occur­ing after publication are immaterial for this purpose.

Examples:

(1)

When a work was published in 1950 the author was a Venezuelan citizen; the fact that he has now become a U.S. citizen does not make the work registrable.

(2)

A Turkish author was resident in the U.S. while writing a book, but had re­turned permanently to Turkey by the time it was published; registration cannot be made (unless first publica­tion took place in a foreign U.C.C. country ).

[1973]