copyrightable, and the copyright owner may be entitled to a separate award of statutory damages for each work. Thus, if the applicant intents to register a number of individual works (but does not intend to register the collection as a whole), the applicant may want to include a statement in the application that the claimant claims no authorship in the selection, coordination, and/or arrangement of works included within the collection. When completing an online application this statement may be provided in the Note to Copyright Office field. When completing a paper application it may be provided in a cover letter. However, unless selection, coordination, and/or arrangement is specifically claimed in the application the Office will presume that the claim is solely in the individual works in the unpublished collection.
Copyright owners who use a group registration option may be entitled to claim a separate award of statutory damages for each work that is covered by the registration, because a group registration covers each work that is submitted for registration (rather than the group as a whole]. However, there is an exception to this rule. As discussed in Section 1117, a group registration for a database covers the updates or revisions that were added to the database during the period specified in the registration. Copyright owners that use this option are entitled to claim only one award of statutory damages in a copyright infringement action, because the updates or revisions to a database are derivative compilations, and as noted above, the statute expressly states that "all the parts of a compilation or derivative work constitute one work" when calculating statutory damages. See id.
1105 Cancellation
The U.S. Copyright Office may cancel a group registration or a registration for an unpublished collection or a unit of publication if the Office subsequently determines that the applicant failed to comply with the relevant requirements for these options. The practices and procedures for cancelling a registration are discussed in Chapter 1800, Section 1806.
1106 Unpublished Collections
This Section discusses the U.S. Copyright Office's current practices and procedures for registering a number of works using the unpublished collection option. This option is a registration accommodation for creators that incentivizes timely registration.
NOTE: When an unpublished work is registered with the Office it does not have to be registered again after the work is published (although as discussed in Chapter 500, Section 510.1, the Office will register the first published edition of a work even if the unpublished version and the published version are substantially the same]. Registration as an unpublished work prior to infringement will preserve the availability of statutory damages and/or recovery of attorney's fees.
1106.1 Eligibility Requirements
An applicant may register multiple unpublished works with one application and one filing fee, provided that the following conditions have been met:
Chapter 1100 : 11
12/22/2014
