property rights in any material object (absent a written agreement to that effect). 17 U.S.C. § 202.
A party that has obtained all of the rights under copyright that initially belonged to the author may be named as the copyright claimant for a letter, email, journal, diary, or other written correspondence. When completing the application, the applicant should provide a brief transfer statement explaining how the claimant obtained the copyright in the work. For example, the registration specialist may accept an application if the applicant states that the claimant obtained the copyright “by inheritance” or “by written agreement,” but the specialist will question an application if the applicant simply states “I found this diary in the attic,” “my mother gave me this journal,” “my boyfriend sent me these love letters,” or the like. These types of statements suggest that the claimant may own a material object (i.e., a journal, a diary, a letter), but it is unclear whether the claimant owns the copyright in the work that is embodied in those objects. For guidance on identifying the copyright claimant, see Chapter 600, Section 619. For guidance on providing a transfer statement, see Chapter 600, Section 620.
In some cases, journals, diaries, letters, or other written correspondence may be published with new material that introduces, illustrates, or explains the work, such as forewords, afterwords, footnotes, annotations, or the like. As discussed in Section 709.4, this type of material may be registered as a derivative work if it contains a sufficient amount of original authorship. See 17 U.S.C. § 101 (definition of “derivative work”). The applicant should limit the claim to the new text that the author contributed to the work, the applicant should provide the name of the author who created the new text, together with the name of the claimant who owns the copyright in the new text. Applicants should use the terms “new text,” “text of introduction,” or the like to describe this type of authorship, rather than “text” or “editing.” If the new material contains a substantial amount of pictorial or graphic expression, applicants should use the term “artwork” and/or “photograph(s)” to describe this type of authorship. In all cases, the journal, diary, letters, or other written correspondence should be excluded from the claim if that material has been previously published, previously registered, if it is in the public domain, or if the copyright in that material is owned by another party. For a discussion of the procedure for excluding this type of material from a claim, see Chapter 600, Section 621.8.
719 Interviews
An interview is a written or recorded account of a conversation between two or more individuals. Typically, the interviewer poses a series of questions that elicit a response from the interviewee(s). An interview may be registered if the conversation has been fixed in a tangible medium of expression and if it contains a sufficient amount of creative expression in the form of questions and responses. Specifically, an interview may be registered as a literary work if it has been fixed in a written transcript, an audio recording, a video recording, or other medium of expression. An interview may be registered as a work of the performing arts if the interview was performed or is intended to be performed before an audience, such as a television interview, radio interview, or onstage interview.
