Hey folks, welcome back to All Up In Yo' Business.

I'm attorney Aiden Durham with

180 Law Co. in Colorado and today we're going to dive into the exciting world of
copyrights and talk about the copyright registration process. Before we get into
all that fun stuff though, if you are new to All
Up In Yo' Business, welcome. Please subscribe, click that little bell so you get
notified anytime I post a new video and check the description for links to
additional information and resources. And while I am a lawyer, I am not your
lawyer. The stuff I talk about in this video is not to be taken as a substitute for
actual legal advice. If you need help with any legal situation,
you should consult with a lawyer who's licensed in your state. So before we get
into the copyright registration process, let's start with some of the basics of
what a copyright is, what a copyright applies to, so we know what we're talking
about when we go into copyright registration. Copyrights
protect original works of authorship. Think of works of creativity and artistic
works, literary, dramatic, musical, and other artistic works like novels, movies,
songs, photos, paintings,
really anything that has some minimal amount of creativity to it. If it's original
and there's some creativity behind it, then it's most likely that copyrights
apply. What is a copyright? It's exactly what it sounds like. It's the right to
copy. Only the copyright holder has the right to
reproduce, display, perform, or make derivative works of that original work.
Copyrights apply as soon as the work is fixed in some tangible form. Now don't
take the word tangible too literally. It doesn't mean it has to actually be
something that you can physically hold in your
hands, but it does have to be put down in some kind of tangible way. So for
example, a blog post, copyrights apply as soon as you write that blog post. It has
to be put down in some way, so the contrary to that is like ideas. Copyrights don't
apply to ideas for a blog post or maybe ideas for
a song or a book, those you can't protect with copyrights. So I just said
copyrights come up. Hi birdie. Copyrights come up as soon as you create the work
and put it in some kind of tangible format. So what does it mean to register a
copyright? Why would we register a copyright if we
already have the copyrights in this work? Well like a lot of other things, for
example, trademark registration, copyright registration isn't necessary, but it is
really helpful and it gives you a lot of rights that you don't otherwise have. For
example, by registering the copyright you have the ability
to sue someone for copyright infringement. That's right, if you're kind of
confused, you don't need a copyright registration, but if you want to sue someone
for copyright infringement, then you do need the copyright registration. It also
allows you to claim statutory damages and attorney's fees in
some situations as well. So let's get into a little bit of the copyright
registration process and how all of that works. Compared to other forms of
intellectual property like trademark registration or patents, getting a copyright
registration is relatively quick and easy. Not super quick and
always, you know, not necessarily always easy, but compared to other types of
intellectual property, copyrights, you know, are generally going to take not quite
as long and not so much as going to be involved. So there are three things you're
going to need to register a copyright. First, you need to complete an application
with the United States Copyright Office. You're going to have to pay some
filing fees and you're going to have to make a deposit of the work to the Copyright
Office. So you'll begin the process by going to copyright.gov. This is the
official website of the United States Copyright Office and then you can navigate to
the registration section. You'll need to create a user
account if you haven't already and then you'll need to fill out the appropriate
form, the appropriate application. The specific form or specific application that
you're going to use is going to depend on the type of work or works that you're
applying to register. There are certain forms for
let's say just a standard application versus a certain form for maybe a group of
unpublished works. Thankfully, the the U.S. Copyright Office, they give a lot of
detailed instruction and really helpful information and helpful guides on their
website. So if you're trying to do a copyright
application yourself, I encourage you to really spend some time and go through all
those resources that the Copyright Office gives you because they can be extremely
helpful. So with the application, you can submit a paper application, but most of
us in most circumstances will use the online
application at copyright.gov. The benefits of doing this, we get a slightly lower
filing fee, the process is generally going to be faster, and we'll have the
ability to kind of monitor and track the status of our application. And it's
important to be careful when you're going through
the application. Make sure you're providing all of the information and it's all
accurate and correct, otherwise it might get kicked back or get rejected. I
mentioned fees just a second ago. The application fees for a copyright, again
that's going to vary. Right now it's somewhere typically
in the range of about $35 to $85, but there's some outliers that are a bit more
expensive than that. But typically for most of us, it's going to be around $35 to
$85 per application. And then along with the application and the filing fees, we're
going to have to submit a copy or copies of the
work to the Copyright Office. We call this a deposit. You have to deposit a copy of
the works with the Copyright Office. Sometimes we can make the deposit
electronically. Sometimes we have to actually send in a physical copy or a physical
deposit. And keep in mind with this, if you are
sending in actual physical copies, we are not going to get these back. So make sure
it's actually a copy because you're not going to get it back from the Copyright
Office. So once we have everything submitted, a registration specialist is going to
examine your application to determine, number one,
if the work that we're applying for, if the work constitutes copyrightable
materials. So if it's actually eligible for copyright registration. And they're
going to go through and make sure all the other legal and other requirements have
been met as well. The overall timing is going to vary. Of
course, generally we can expect it to take anywhere from like three, maybe up to
nine months start to finish. If the registration specialist determines that the
work is not copyrightable or if some of the requirements haven't been met, then
they're usually going to reject the application. They will
refuse that registration and they'll send a notice specifying what went wrong, why
it's being kicked back or refused. You may also receive a letter or an email or a
phone call from the copyright specialist if there are some questions or maybe if
they need some additional information or something.
That's not super common, but that could happen as well. Otherwise, if the
registration specialist determines that it is copyrightable material and it meets
all other requirements, the copyright office will register the copyright and they
will issue a certificate of registration. Then voila,
congratulations, you've received your copyright registration certificate and you're
officially a copyright registration owner or a copyright holder. It's important
you want to keep that certificate in a safe place. Don't lose it. Don't let it get
damaged. It serves as proof of your ownership
of that copyright. You may also want to consider marking your work with that little
C in a circle symbol, that copyright symbol, and including your name or the
copyright holder name and the year of publication. It's not required to do that,
but doing that can act as something of a deterrent
for potential infringers. Another little pro tip here, you can use that little
copyright symbol with or without a copyright registration. Compare this to
trademarks where you can use the TM symbol for anything, but that R in a circle
symbol is only for registered trademarks. That's
not the case here. For copyrightable works, we can use that little C in a circle
symbol whether it's registered or not, and it helps to kind of maybe deter
potential infringement. That's all for this episode, folks. If you learned a thing
or two, go ahead and give me a thumbs up, won't you? Make
sure you subscribe, click that little bell so you get notified anytime I post a new
video, and of course check the description for links to additional information and
resources. If you're leaving this video maybe a little confused, maybe you're not
quite sure what is the difference between a copyright and a trademark or maybe a
difference between a copyright, trademark,
and a patent, I've got a whole video talking about all the differences between
copyrights, trademarks, patents, how they're different, how they all kind of play
together. You can check it out right here and I'll meet you over there. Thank you
so much for watching. I'm Aiden Durham and I'll see you next time.

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