the same calendar year. One of the criteria, however, makes that provision applicable only to timely renewal registration. 32 17 U.S.C. § 408(c)(3). Once timely renewal registration ended for the last works that secured copyright under the Copyright Act of 1909, the U.S. Copyright Office determined that group renewal registration should no longer be made. Therefore, as of 2006, group renewal registration has not been available.
2129 Joint Works and Other Unitary Works
Generally, when a work is unitary in nature the renewal claim should include all of the authorship claimed in the original registration record or first published in the work, unless any portion of the work is preexisting or separately owned for the renewal term. This principle is in contrast with renewal registration of works that are collective in nature, where the renewal claim generally must be limited to the compilation or editorial authorship contributed by the individual or proprietary author. See Section 2126.
2130 Uncorrected Errors in Original Registration Records
Generally, when a renewal claim is based on an original registration record, it should reflect the facts given in the original registration record. However, when that record contains an error that was not corrected during the original term and the error is presented to the U.S. Copyright Office at the time of renewal registration, the Office may allow the renewal registration record to state the correct facts if those facts are supported and will result in a more useful and accurate renewal registration record. For information regarding renewal claims with new or different information, see Section 2134.
2131 Corrected Original Registration Records
The Copyright Act of 1909 did not provide for correction of registration records, but U.S. Copyright Office regulations allowed the Office to correct its own errors. Initially, most errors (other than Office errors) were addressed by recording a document against the registration record, but later the Office made other corrective actions available to applicants, including corrective registration and filing a new basic registration. The appropriate use of these corrective actions depended on whether the work was
32 The Office interpreted this provision broadly to include a variety of works by the same individual author (such as textual articles, cartoons, photographs, musical works) that were first published as separate, distinct works of authorship in periodicals, and other larger works, including serials and published collections, published within the same calendar year, and until 2006, did not require that such renewal claims be filed during the renewal filing period.
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