You may have heard there’s no need to register your copyright, because it’s automatically protected. But this is only half the story—you can’t enforce your copyright without either a certificate of registration or a denial of registration from the Copyright Office.
Plus, there are a lot of reasons to register all of your copyrights promptly.
1. If you register a work within three months of the date of first publication, the registration is retroactive to the date of first publication.
The term “publication” has a technical meaning in the copyright laws, but generally speaking, “first publication” occurs on the date on which copies of the work are first made available to the public.
2. Prompt registration means you’re eligible to recover statutory damages.
Normally, the remedies for copyright infringement are the recovery of actual damages (if they can be proven) and court orders requiring all infringing copies to be destroyed and prohibiting future copying.
As you might guess, it’s often difficult, if not impossible, to prove actual damages. If, however, your copyright in the work was registered before the infringement occurred (or within three months of publication), you have the option of being awarded statutory damages rather than actual damages.
Statutory damages are no less than $750 and no more than $30,000 per work infringed, though if you establish that the infringement was willful, they may be as high as $150,000, and damages for an innocent infringer may be as low as $200.
3. Copyright infringement lawsuits are expensive.
If your copyright was registered prior to (or within three months of) publication and you prove that your work was infringed, you’re eligible for an award reimbursing the attorneys’ fees you incurred in the case.
This also benefits you in settlement negotiations, because although the award isn’t guaranteed (it’s a matter of the court’s discretion), the infringer must factor in a potential award of attorneys’ fees when it calculates the pros and cons of settling.
4. If you register your copyright within five years after its first publication, the registration is “prima facie evidence” of the copyright’s validity and of the facts stated in the certificate of registration.
This means there’s a presumption that your copyright is valid and that everything in the registration (e.g., the creator of the work, the owner of the copyright, and the dates the work was completed and published) is accurate.
Normally, in an infringement suit, you’d need to provide evidence to prove all of this, but with a timely registration, the burden shifts to the infringer.
In other words, instead of you having to prove your copyright is valid, the infringer needs to prove that it’s invalid. Similarly, instead of you being required to prove that the facts in your registration are true, the infringer has the burden of proving they’re inaccurate.
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Given all of these benefits, it’s easy to see why you should register your copyrights promptly. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about or need help with registering or enforcing your copyrights.
Photo by Mike Seyfang, used pursuant to CC BY 2.0 DEED license
