- birth. The registration specialist will communicate with the applicant. Although the introduction may be registered as “text,” the Office cannot register the claim in “compilation,” because preparing a list of all of the family members from a particular county and organizing the names in chronological order does not contain a sufficient amount of compilation authorship to warrant registration.
716 Instructional Texts and Instructional Works
Textbooks and other instructional texts maybe registered if the work contains a sufficient amount of original authorship. The statute defines an “instructional text” as “a literary, pictorial, or graphic work prepared for publication and with the purpose of use in systematic instructional activities.” See 17 U.S.C. § 101 (definition of “work made for hire”). As the legislative history explains, this category includes “textbook material,” regardless of whether the work is published “in book form or prepared in the form of text matter.” H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476, at 121 (1976) reprinted in 1976 U.S.C.C.A.N. at 5737; S. Rep. No. 94-473, at 105 (1975). The “basic characteristic” of an instructional text is that the work must be prepared for “use in systematic instructional activities,” rather than a work “prepared for use by a general readership.” H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476, at 121 (1976) reprinted in 1976 U.S.C.C.A.N. at 5737; S. Rep. No. 94-473, at 105 (1975). Instructional texts 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. For a discussion of works made for hire, see Chapter 500, Section 506.
Other types of instructional works may be registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, provided that the work, taken as a whole, contains a sufficient amount of original authorship. Examples of works that may satisfy this requirement include cookbooks, instructions for knitting, crocheting, or needlework, instructions for operating a machine, appliance, or other device, and similar types of works.
If text is the predominant form of authorship, an instructional text or other instructional work may be registered as a nondramatic literary work. If the predominant form of authorship consists of artwork, illustrations, or photographs, the work may be registered as a work of the visual arts. See 37 C.F.R. § 202.3(b)(1)(i), (iii). For information concerning the registration requirements for stencils, patterns, and how-to books, see Chapter 900, Section 920.
The Literary Division may register an instructional work that explains how to perform a particular activity, provided that the work contains a sufficient amount of text, photographs, artwork, or other copyrightable expression. Likewise, the Literary Division may register an instructional work that illustrates or describes the end result for a particular activity or technique, such as a drawing of a crochet pattern or a photograph of a product that has been fully assembled.
When asserting a claim in an instructional text or an instructional work, the claim should be limited to the text, artwork, and/or photographs that appear in the work, the applicant should provide the name of the author who created that material, and the applicant should provide the name of the claimant who owns the copyright in that
