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The Legal Brief

New Group Registration Rule Adopted by the Copyright Office

October 19, 2020

By: Joshua A. Claybourn

Bloggers, social media influencers, and other online content creators may now to take advantage of a new group copyright registration option for short online works such as blog entries, social media posts, and other short online works. The Copyright Office recently adopted a new rule implementing group registration to assist copyright registration for high volume or daily content creators.

Applicants may register up to fifty short online literary works per application. To qualify, each work must contain at least 50 but no more than 17,500 words. The works must be created by the same individual, or jointly by the same individuals, and each creator must be named as the copyright claimant or claimants for each work. The works must all be published online within a three-calendar-month period. If the Copyright Office registers the claim, the registration will cover each work as a separate work of authorship.

The new rule does not apply to works made for hire or to copyrights that have been assigned. The new rule also does not apply to emails, podcasts, audio-books, or video blogs. More information on the new group registration for short online literary works can be found here.

 

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