- authorship in the selection, coordination, and/or arrangement of new data that appears in each update.
When asserting a claim in a compilation, the applicant should provide the name of each author who created the selection, coordination, and/or arrangement that the applicant intends to register, and the applicant should assert a claim to copyright in that material using the procedures described in Chapter 600, Sections 618.7, 618.6, and 621.8(D).
For a general discussion of the legal standard for determining whether a compilation contains a sufficient amount of original expression to warrant registration, see Chapter 300, Section 312.2.
711 Collective Works and Contributions to Collective Works
The Copyright Act defines a “collective work” as a work “in which a number of contributions, constituting separate and independent works in themselves, are assembled into a collective whole.” 17 U.S.C. § 101. A contribution to a collective work is a separate and independent work that has been included within a collective work.
Since collective works are a subset of compilations, they must select, coordinate, and/or arrange component works in such a way that the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship. See 17 U.S.C. § 101 (definition of “compilation” stating that “The term ‘compilation’ includes collective works.”).
Both collective works and contributions to collective works are among the nine categories of works that can be specially ordered or commissioned as a work made for hire, provided that the parties expressly agree in a signed written instrument that the work shall be considered a work made for hire. Compare 17 U.S.C. § 101 (definition of “compilation”) (“The term ‘compilation’ includes collective works.”), with id. (definition of “work made for hire”) (“a ‘work made for hire’ is … a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work [or] … as a compilation…”). For a detailed discussion of works made for hire, see Chapter 500, Section 506.
Collective works and contributions to collective works may be registered as nondramatic literary works, provided that they contain a sufficient amount of literary expression. Examples of collective works that may satisfy this requirement include a periodical issue, an anthology, an encyclopedia, or any other work that contains a number of separate and independent works that have been assembled into a collective whole. See 17 U.S.C. § 101 (definition of “collective work”). Examples of a contribution to a collective work that may satisfy this requirement include an article that has been included within a periodical issue, an essay that has been included within an anthology, or a chapter that has been included within a textbook.
Collective works typically contain two different types of authorship:
- The authorship in the collective work as a whole, which may involve selecting, coordinating, and/or arranging the various contributions to the collective work, and/or editing, annotating, and/or revising the contributions or the collective work as a whole.
