"photograph" the registration specialist may assume that the applicant intends to register the authorship involved in taking the photograph of the lithograph, rather than the authorship involved in creating the reproduction of the preexisting painting.
916.2(B) Authorship Unclear
Applicants should not use vague terms to describe the new authorship that the author contributed to an art print or reproduction. Likewise, applicants should not use terms that merely describe the tools or methods that the author used to create the work, such as "computer print," "computer reproduction," "block print," "offset print," "print," or "photoengraving," because this suggests that the applicant may be asserting a claim in an idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery.
If the author merely painted over areas of the source work, the registration specialist may communicate with the applicant if it appears that the applicant is attempting to register the authorship (if any) involved in restoring the source work to its original condition.
917 Installation Art
The U.S. Copyright Office generally discourages applicants from using the term "installation art" in applications to register visual art works. Applicants use this term for a wide variety of artistic endeavors and it has many broad, ambiguous meanings. Because this term is unclear, the registration specialist will communicate with applicants if they describe a pictorial, graphic, or sculptural work as "installation art."
Instead, applicants should identify any copyrightable content in the work and should describe that content using terms such as "sculpture," "painting," "photographs," or the like. This is true even if the overall installation itself is a registrable work of authorship. In such cases the applicant should use accepted terms to describe the work, such as "a series of sequentially and thematically related photographs interspersed with drawn and painted images to create a larger work of authorship."
918 Maps
Maps may be protected under the copyright law as pictorial works or sculptural works, depending on whether the work contains two- or three-dimensional authorship. Indeed, maps were among the first works that were eligible for copyright protection under the 1790 Act. This Section discusses certain issues that commonly arise in connection with such works.
918.1 Copyrightable Authorship in Maps
Maps are cartographic or visual representations of an area. Examples include terrestrial maps and atlases, marine charts, celestial maps, as well as three-dimensional works, such as globes and relief models. A map may represent a real or imagined place, such as a map in a book or videogame that depicts a fictional country.
Chapter 900 : 30
12/22/2014
