EveryBody's Guide to the Law

months after the date of first publication of the work or prior to an infringement of the work,
the copyright owner will be able to recover statutory damages and, in the court’s discretion,
attorney’s fees in court actions in addition to other damages. If the copyright was not so registered,
the copyright owner is entitled to recover only actual damages and lost profits resulting
from the infringement.
To register your work with the Copyright Office, you will need to do the following:
❉ Send a properly completed request-for-copyright application form; to obtain a copyright
application form, call the Copyright Office between the hours of 8:30 A.M. and 5:00 P.M.
Eastern time at (202) 707-3000 or (202) 707-6737 (TTY); mail a request for the form to
the Library of Congress, Copyright Office, 101 Independence Avenue, SE, Washington,
DC, 20559-6000; or download the form from the Copyright Office’s website at
http://www.loc.gov/copyright.
❉ Send a nonrefundable fee payable to the Registrar of Copyrights in the appropriate
amount for each application; you can get the current fee by calling the Copyright Office
at the number above or by accessing its website.
❉ If the work was first published in the United States on or after January 1, 1978, send two
copies or phonorecords of the best edition to the Library of Congress Copyright Office at
the address noted above.
If the work is a motion picture, the deposit requirement is one complete copy of the unpublished
or published motion picture and a separate written description of its contents, such as
continuity, press book, or synopsis. If the work is a literary, dramatic, or musical work published
only in a phonorecord, the deposit requirement is one complete phonorecord. If the work is a
published or unpublished computer program, the deposit is one “visually perceptible” copy in
source code of the first twenty-five and last twenty-five pages of the program. If the program is
fewer than fifty pages, then a complete copy of the program must be deposited with the Copyright
Office. If the work is in a CD-ROM format, then the deposit requirement is one copy of
the CD-ROM, the operating software, and any manuals that accompany it. If you also want to
register the computer program on the CD-ROM, you should include a printout of the first
twenty-five and last twenty-five pages of source code for the program. If the work you want to
copyright is three-dimensional, photographs or drawings of the work are usually sufficient.
The Copyright Act establishes a mandatory deposit requirement for works published in
the United States. Generally speaking, the owner of the copyright or the owner of the exclusive
right of publication in the work has a legal obligation to deposit in the Copyright Office,
within three months of publication in the United States, two copies (or two phonorecords)
for the use of the Library of Congress. If you fail to make the requisite deposit, you are subject
to fines and other penalties. Failure to deposit a work does not, however, affect copyright
protection.
Civil Rights and Liberties 485