If the work contains an appreciable amount of unclaimable material, then the applicant should complete the Limitation of Claim fields/spaces in order to limit the claim to the new copyrightable material created by the author. In this case, the claim to copyright is defined by the information provided in the New Material Included field or the information provided in space 6(b). Therefore, all of the material that the applicant intends to register should be described in this field/space. In such cases, the information that the applicant provides in the New Material Included field should be duplicated in the Author Created field. Likewise, the information that the applicant provides in space 6(b) should be duplicated in the Nature of Authorship space.
NOTE: The applicant should complete the New Material Included field of the online application or space 6(b) of the paper application only when unclaimable material has been excluded from the claim in the Material Excluded field of the online application or in space 6(a) of the paper application. If no material has been excluded from the claim, the applicant should not complete this portion of the 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.”).
621.4 Previously Published Material
If the work described in the application contains an appreciable amount of copyrightable material that has been previously published, the previously published material should be excluded from the claim using the procedure described in Section 621.8(B). This rule applies regardless of whether the previously published material was published in the United States or in a foreign country (or both).
The applicant should determine whether the work contains previously published material on the date that the work is submitted to the Office. In other words, if the applicant intends to register a work that contains an appreciable amount of material that was published at any time before the application is submitted, the applicant should exclude that previously published material from the claim.
The date of creation for the work that the applicant intends to register is irrelevant to this determination. In other words, previously published material should be disclaimed, regardless of whether that material was created before or simultaneously with the work that the applicant intends to register. Likewise, previously published material should be disclaimed regardless of whether that material was published before or after the date of creation for the work that the applicant intends to register.
Examples:
- The Piecemeal Press submits an application for a textbook and states that the work was published on March 24, 2005. The deposit copies indicate that this is the second edition of this work and that the first edition was published in 2004. In the Material Excluded
