Copyrights
You own it the moment you make it. You can’t sue until it’s registered.
Books, photographs, artwork, music, film, software. Copyright protects your original expression. Registering it opens the courthouse door, and registering it early is what puts statutory damages and your legal fees on the table.
Registration creates a public record of your ownership of the work, and it fixes an official effective date. If the copying starts after you register, a court can award up to $150,000 per work for willful infringement without you proving your losses, and can make them pay your legal fees.
Already published? You get that same protection if you register within three months of publication, even for copying that started before you filed.
Not registered yet? For a work first published in the United States, you can’t file suit until the Copyright Office has registered it or refused it. Register after someone starts copying you and you’re usually limited to actual damages, paying your own legal fees.
Filing the application also gets you into the Copyright Claims Board, a small-claims tribunal capped at $30,000. It’s cheap and it works, right up until the other side opts out, which they get 60 days to do.
We’ll prepare and file the application, correspond with the Copyright Office if they have questions, and send you the certificate once it registers. Processing at the Office typically runs several months, but it varies with the nature of the work.