owned by a third party. If so, the applicant should exclude this content from the application using the procedure described in Chapter 600, Section 621.8(F).
If the applicant asserts a claim in both the copyrightable and uncopyrightable elements of the work, the registration specialist may annotate the application to indicate that the registration does not extend to the uncopyrightable elements. If the applicant asserts a claim to copyright in an element that is uncopyrightable, the registration specialist may communicate with the applicant or may refuse registration if the claim appears to be based solely on that element.
717.1 Legal Publications
A legal publication that analyzes, annotates, summarizes, or comments upon a legislative enactment, a judicial decision, an executive order, an administrative regulation, or other edicts of government may be registered as a nondramatic literary work, provided that the publication contains a sufficient amount of literary expression. Examples of legal publications that may satisfy this requirement are listed below, but in no case does the registration cover any government edict that may be included in the work. See 17 U.S.C. § 105; see also Chapter 300, Section 313.6(C)(2).
Examples:
- Annotated codes that summarize or comment upon legal materials issued by a federal, state, local, or foreign government.
- A compilation of legislative enactments or judicial decisions, provided that the author exercised a sufficient amount of creativity in selecting, coordinating, and/or arranging the material that appears in the compilation.
- Treatises that analyze or review legal subjects.
- Dictionaries, anthologies, and encyclopedias that define or describe legal subjects.
- Legal periodicals that cover specific areas of the law, such as law reviews, legal journals, legal newspapers, legal newsletters, and the like.
- Casebooks containing a selection of legislative enactments and judicial decisions that have been abridged and/or annotated with comments and questions for use in systematic instructional activities.
- Test materials that are used to determine eligibility for membership in a bar association or other professional organization, as well as study materials used to prepare for such tests.
