915 Retrospective Books and Exhibition Catalogs
Retrospective books are published books that review or look back on the career of a visual artist. They typically contain both new and preexisting authorship.
The new authorship is usually prepared expressly for the retrospective book and may include elements such as an introduction, critical essays, photographs, annotated bibliographies, chronological timelines, and the like.
As for the visual artist's works, retrospective books usually contain (i] works that were published before they appeared in the new book, and (ii) other works that have never been sold or otherwise published or publicly exhibited before they appeared in the new book.
When a previously unpublished work is first published in a retrospective book or exhibition catalog, the fact that the work has been published will affect the subsequent registration options for that work. For this reason, artists may want to consider registering their pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works prior to authorizing their depiction in a retrospective book or exhibition catalog.
To register a retrospective book, the applicant should limit the claim to the new content that was prepared specifically for the book, such as new artwork, essays, photographs, indexes, chronologies, bibliographies, or the like. Any artwork that was previously registered, published, or in the public domain should be excluded from the claim using the procedures described in Chapter 600, Section 621.8.
In all cases, the applicant should anticipate that the registration specialist will raise questions about the ownership and first publication provenance of artwork depicted in a retrospective book. Therefore, when completing the application, the applicant should provide as much information about those works as possible.
916 Art Prints and Reproductions
916.1 Copyrightable Authorship in Art Prints and Reproductions
A reproduction of a work of art or a two-dimensional art print may be protected as a derivative work, but only if the print or reproduction contains new authorship that does not appear in the original source work. This category includes hand painted reproductions (typically on canvas); plate, screen, and offset lithographic reproductions of paintings; Giclee prints; block prints; aquaprint; artagraph; among other forms of expression.
Making an exact copy of a source work is not eligible for copyright protection, because it is akin to a purely mechanical copy and includes no new authorship, regardless of the process used to create the copy or the skill, craft, or investment needed to render the copies. For the same reason, a print or reproduction cannot be protected based solely on the complex nature of the source work, the apparent number of technical decisions needed to produce a near-exact reproduction, or the fact that the source work has been rendered in a different medium. For example, the U.S. Copyright Office will not register the following types of prints and reproductions:
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