Opinion of the Court
448 (2005) (declining to read “the same words” in consecutive sentences as “refer[ring] to something totally different”).
The third and final sentence of §411(a) further persuades us that the provision requires action by the Register before a copyright claimant may sue for infringement. The sentence allows the Register to “become a party to the action with respect to the issue of registrability of the copyright claim.” This allowance would be negated, and the court conducting an infringement suit would lack the benefit of the Register’s assessment, if an infringement suit could be filed and resolved before the Register acted on an application.
Other provisions of the Copyright Act support our reading of “registration,” as used in §411(a), to mean action by the Register. Section 410 states that, “after examination,” if the Register determines that “the material deposited constitutes copyrightable subject matter” and “other legal and formal requirements… [are] met, the Register shall register the claim and issue to the applicant a certificate of registration.” §410(a). But if the Register determines that the deposited material “does not constitute copyrightable subject matter or that the claim is invalid for any other reason, the Register shall refuse registration.” §410(b). Section 410 thus confirms that application is discrete from, and precedes, registration. Section 410(d), furthermore, provides that if the Copyright Office registers a claim, or if a court later determines that a refused claim was registrable, the “effective date of [the work’s] copyright registration is the day on which” the copyright owner made a proper submission to the Copyright Office. There would be no need thus to specify the “effective date of a copyright registration” if submission of the required materials qualified as “registration.”
Section 408(f)’s preregistration option, too, would have little utility if a completed application constituted regis-
