The applicant should provide the name of the choreographer who created the choreographic authorship that appears in the work and the applicant should provide the name of the claimant who owns the copyright in that material.
The Performing Arts Division may accept a claim in "choreography" or "dance," provided that the work is a choreographic work under Section 102(a)(4) of the Copyright Act and provided that it contains a sufficient amount of choreographic expression. When completing an online application, this information should be provided in the box marked "Other" that appears in the Author Created field, and if applicable, also in the New Material Included field. When completing a paper application on Form PA, this information should be provided in space 2, and if applicable, also in space 6(b). For guidance on completing these portions of the application, see Chapter 600, Sections 618.4 and 621.8.
805.10 Deposit Requirements for Choreographic Works
As discussed in Section 805.3, choreographic works may be fixed with dance notation, an audiovisual recording, a textual description, or any other tangible medium of expression that is sufficient to identify the applicant's claim to copyright in the choreography and to allow the U.S. Copyright Office to examine the work for copyrightable authorship.
For a discussion of the deposit requirements for choreographic works, see Chapter 1500, Section 1509.2(D).
806 Pantomimes
This Section discusses the U.S. Copyright Office's practices and procedures for the examination of unpublished pantomimes and pantomimes first published on or after January 1, 1978 [i.e., the date that pantomimes became a category of authorship subject to federal copyright protection).
806.1 What Is a Pantomime?
The Copyright Act recognizes pantomime as a distinct category of copyrightable authorship. 17 U.S.C. § 102(a)(4). The statute does not define "pantomime." However, the legislative history states that this term has a "fairly settled meaningf]." H.R. Rep. No. 94-1476, at 53 (1976), reprinted in 1976 U.S.C.C.A.N. at 5666-67; S. Rep. No. 94-473, at 52 (1975).
Pantomime is the art of imitating, presenting, or acting out situations, characters, or events through the use of physical gestures and bodily movements. Long before Congress extended federal copyright protection to pantomimes, the Supreme Court recognized that a silent performance is worthy of copyright protection if it qualifies as a dramatic work. As Justice Holmes observed: "[DJrama may be achieved by action as well as by speech. Action can tell a story, display all the most vivid relations between men, and depict every kind of human emotion, without the aid of a word. It would be impossible to deny the title of drama to pantomime as played by masters of the art." Kalem Co. v. Harper Bros., 222 U.S. 55, 61 (1911).
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