• The applicant may submit the first twenty-five pages and last twenty-five pages of object code for the program together with ten or more consecutive pages of source code, provided that none of the source code is blocked out; or
• If the source code for the entire program is less than fifty pages, the applicant may submit the entire code with the portions of the code that contain trade secret material blocked out, provided that the blocked out portions are proportionately less than the remaining material and provided that the unblocked portions contain an appreciable amount of original authorship.
See 37 C.F.R. § 202.20(c)(2)(vii)(A)(2); see also Data General Corp. v. Grumman Systems Support Corp., 825 F. Supp. 340, 356 (D. Mass. 1993) ("In the case of a computer program that contains trade secret material . . . the Copyright Office permits the deposit to take the form of a symbolic filing ").
In all cases, the applicant should submit the portion of the source code that contains the copyright notice (if any) for the specific version that the applicant intends to register.
In addition, the applicant should notify the Office that the source code contains trade secret material. When completing an online application, this information should be provided in the Note to Copyright Office field. When completing a paper application on Form TX, this information should be provided in a cover letter.
1509.1(C)(4)(c) Derivative Computer Programs That Contain Trade Secret Material
If the applicant intends to register a derivative computer program that contains trade secret material and if the new material or revised material appears throughout the entire program, the applicant should submit a portion of the source code for that version using one of the following options:
• The applicant may submit the first ten pages and last ten pages of source code, provided that none of the code is blocked out; or
• The applicant may submit the first twenty-five pages and last twenty-five pages of source code with the portions of the code that contain trade secret material blocked out, provided that the blocked out portions are proportionately less than the remaining material and provided that the unblocked portions contain an appreciable amount of original computer code.
If the new material or revised material does not appear throughout the entire program or within the first twenty-five pages and last twenty-five pages of the source code, the applicant should use one of the following options:
• The applicant may submit twenty pages of code that are representative of the new or revised material, provided that none of the code is blocked out; or
• The applicant may submit any fifty pages of source code that are representative of the new or revised material. The portions of the code that contain trade secret material may be blocked out, provided that the blocked out portions are
Chapter 1500 : 27
12/22/2014
