| The
United States
Copyright Office provides copyright
application forms, but caution is advised. The forms
can be deceptively simple and mistakes can be costly
in terms of a loss of rights at some time in the
future.
In practice,
copyrights are anything but simple. For example,
presenting the title alone may be an important
consideration. As another example, determining
authorship may require a detailed analysis of whether
or not two or more people were involved in the
creation of the work and whether the work was a work
for hire.
Important
statutory rights may be lost if a copyright
registration is not obtained properly and in a timely
manner.
The forms
available from the United States Copyright Office are
by and large, written from the vantage point of the
Copyright Office, not from the vantage point most
advantageous to the copyright owner and claimant. |
