may be registered, provided that the work as a whole falls within one or more of the congressionally established categories of authorship. A blank form that merely contains words, short phrases, or a de minimis amount of text does not satisfy this requirement because it does not qualify as a literary work, a pictorial work, a graphic work, or any of the other categories of works listed in Section 102(a). Cf. Registration of Claims to Copyright, 77 Fed. Reg. 37,605, 37,607 (June 22, 2012).
If a blank form poses an extensive number of questions or contains an exhaustive checklist of information, the registration specialist may communicate with the applicant or may refuse registration if it appears that the applicant is asserting a claim in the ideas, principles, systems, or methods implemented by the form.
313.4(H) Characters
Although the copyright law does not protect the name or the general idea for a character, a work that depicts or describes a particular character may be registered if it contains a sufficient amount of original authorship.
A registration for a visual art work, a literary work, or a work of the performing arts that depicts or describes a character covers the expression set forth in the deposit copy(ies), but it does not cover the character per se. In other words, the copyright in the registered work protects the author’s expression of the character, but it does not protect the mere concept of the character. The copyright in the character itself is limited to the artistic rendition of the character in visual form or the literary delineation of the character’s specific attributes in textual form. If another party merely uses the character’s name or the general idea for the character there would be no infringement under the copyright law. By contrast, if another party copies the visual or textual expression set forth in the deposit copy(ies), the copyright owner of that work may have a cause of action. (The trademark law may provide additional protection for the character’s name or other attributes if the character is sufficiently distinctive and is used to identify the source of the trademark owner’s goods or services.)
For a further discussion of characters, see Chapter 800, Section 804.2(B) and Chapter 900, Section 911.
313.4(I) Scènes à Faire
The copyright law does not protect stock characters, settings, or events that are common to a particular subject matter or medium because they are commonplace and lack originality. For example, the copyright for a work about the Hindenburg would not cover elements that are “indispensable, or at least standard, in the treatment of” that topic, such as scenes that take place in a German beer hall or characters who utter common greetings of the period. See Hoehling, 618 F.2d at 979. The copyright for a work about a police station in an urban slum would not cover elements that necessarily result from the choice of that setting, such as scenes depicting drunks, prostitutes, vermin, and derelict cars, or stock themes commonly linked to the genre of police fiction, such as foot chases or the “familiar figure of the Irish cop.” See Walker v. Time Life Films, Inc., 784 F.2d 44, 50 (2d Cir. 1986). Likewise, the fact “[t]hat treasure might be hidden in a cave inhabited by snakes, that fire might be used to repel the snake, that birds might frighten an intruder in the jungle, and that a weary traveler might seek solace in a tavern … [are]
