space 2 of the application under the heading Nature of Authorship. For guidance on completing this portion of the application, see Section 618.4.
The U.S. Copyright Office registers claims to copyright in works of authorship. As a general rule, the Office will issue one registration for each work that is submitted for registration. The registration specialist may examine the individual elements or components of a work to determine if the work as a whole contains a sufficient amount of creative expression to warrant registration. However, the Office will not issue separate registrations for the constituent elements or components of a work of authorship. Likewise, the Office will not issue separate registrations to each author who contributed copyrightable expression to a work of authorship (except as contributions to a collective work or derivative works).
As a general rule, the specialist will register a claim to copyright if the claim is clearly supported by the information provided in the application and the deposit copy(ies), and if the other formal and legal requirements have been met. If the Author Created field or the Nature of Authorship space is completed incorrectly, the registration specialist may register the claim with an annotation if the specialist determines that the claim is clear from the registration materials as a whole. If the claim is unclear, the registration specialist will communicate with the applicant.
The information provided in the Author Created field or the Nature of Authorship space will appear on the certificate of registration in a space marked Author Created and in the online public record in the field marked Authorship (regardless of whether the applicant submits an online application or a paper application).
See Corrections and Amplifications of Copyright Registrations; Applications for Supplementary Registration, 63 Fed. Reg. 59,235, 59,235 (Nov. 3, 1998) (“The Copyright Office follows the general policy of requiring all authors and copyright claimants to supply information, consistent with 17 U.S.C. § 409, concerning the authorship being claimed in the application for registration.”).
618.2 Limiting the Claim to Copyright
A registration only covers the new material that the author contributed to the work. As explained in Section 621, a registration does not extend to any unclaimable material that may appear in the work, namely:
- Previously published material.
- Previously registered material (including material that has been submitted for registration but has not been registered yet).
- Material that is in the public domain.
- Copyrightable material that is owned by another party (i.e., an individual or entity other than the copyright claimant).
