As discussed in Section 1603.4, the work must be unpublished as of the date that the application is submitted. An application will be questioned if the date of expected commercial distribution is the same as the date that the application is received in the U.S. Copyright Office, but an application received the day before the expected date of commercial distribution will be accepted.
1606.7 Description of the Work
The applicant should not submit a copy or phonorecord of the work or any portion of the work with the application for preregistration. Instead, the applicant should provide a detailed description that reasonably identifies the work.
The description should be based on the information available at the time the application is submitted, and it should contain no more than 2,000 characters (including spaces and punctuation marks). At a minimum, the description should be sufficiently detailed and specific to satisfy a court in a copyright infringement action that the allegedly infringed work is, in fact, the work described in the application for preregistration. Merely reciting the title of the work or the type of work [e.g., "motion picture" or "sound recording"] is not sufficient.
Because the description will be made available to the public through the U.S. Copyright Office's website, the applicant should not include any portion of the work in that description, such as the lyrics for a song or the lines of code for a computer program.
The specific requirements for describing a motion picture, sound recording, musical composition, book, computer program, videogame, or advertising or marketing photograph, are discussed in Sections 1606.7(A) through 1606.7(F).
See 37 C.F.R. § 202.16(c)(6); see also Preregistration of Certain Unpublished Copyright Claims, 70 Fed. Reg. 42,286, 42,289, 42,290 (July 22, 2005).
1606.7(A) Motion Pictures
In the case of a motion picture, the description should include: the subject matter of the work; a summary or outline of the plot; the names of the director and the primary actors; the principal location of filming; and any other information that would assist in identifying the work being preregistered. 37 C.F.R. § 202.16(c)(6)(f).
1606.7(B) Sound Recordings
In the case of a sound recording, the description should include: the subject matter of the work(s) recorded; the genre of the work(s) recorded [e.g., classical, pop, musical comedy, soft rock, heavy metal, gospel, rap, hip-hop, blues, jazz); the title(s) and composer(s) of any musical compositions embodied in the sound recording; the name(s) of the performer or performing group(s) featured in the recording; the principal location of the recording; and any other information that would assist in identifying the work being preregistered, such as the name of the record label that is expected to distribute the work. 37 C.F.R. § 202.16(c)(6)(h).
Chapter 1600 : 15
12/22/2014
