Page:Compendium of US Copyright Office Practices, II (1984).pdf/135

500-7

(cont'd)

Examples: (cont'd)

(cont'd) Copyright Office for registration of a design for an unpublished sculptural work of art. His appli­cation Form VA is accompanied by one complete set of magnetized spheres, cubes, and cylinders arranged in a plain box according to size and color. Practice: We will refuse a registration in Class VA based solely upon the unassem­bled toy, even though its component parts or pieces are potentially capable of being arranged in copy­rightable shapes and forms. The general idea of the toy is uncopy­rightable, regardless of its novelty or uniqueness.

A work described as a "mobile" consists of nine pieces of trans­lucent colored glass each of which is suspended by wire from an over­ head rack designed to rotate about a pivot in a horizontal plane. The suspension wires vary in length and no two pieces of glass share the same shape or outline. Registra­tion is sought in Class VA on the basis of the overall effect pro­duced by the play of light upon the suspended glass components of a work which the applicant describes as "three-dimensional." No copy­rightable authorship is claimed in the design of the individual pieces

[1984]