Page:Copyright Office Compendium 3rd Edition - Full.djvu/168

, Third Edition authorship. For example, the Office will apply the Rule of Doubt if the submits an application to register a  with a deposit copy consisting solely of, rather than. Likewise, the Office may apply the Rule of Doubt at its discretion if the applicant submits a redacted deposit copy under a grant of special relief in order to protect trade secret material that appears in the work. (For a discussion of the procedure for requesting special relief or the practices and procedures for registering a computer program with a deposit copy consisting solely of object code, see and .)

In exceptional cases, the Office may apply the Rule of Doubt if the Office has not taken a position on a legal issue that is directly relevant to whether the work constitutes copyrightable subject matter or whether the other legal and formal requirements of the statute have been met. The Office will not register a claim under the Rule of Doubt simply because there is some uncertainty as to how that issue may be decided by a particular court.

In all cases, the Office will add an to the  and the  indicating that the work was registered under the Rule of Doubt. The Office also may send a letter to the applicant stating the reasons for its decision and a copy of the letter will be placed in the registration record. Both the certificate of registration and the online public record will indicate that correspondence relating to the claim is on file with the Office.

608&emsp;Refusal to Register

In the event the U.S. Copyright Office determines that the does not meet certain requirements for registration based on the registration materials submitted, the  will refuse to register the work. A refusal to register the entire work will be made by a written communication and will be sent to the address provided in the Correspondent section of the application. Examples of situations where the Office will refuse to register a claim include:

Chapter 600 : 36
 * The has not met the legal requirements for registration (e.g., completed application, complete, complete , etc.).
 * The applicant has asserted a claim to copyright in a type of work that is not covered by U.S. copyright law. See 17 U.S.C. §§ 102(b), 105.
 * The work is not in a tangible medium of expression.
 * The work lacks human authorship.
 * The work was not independently created.
 * The work does not contain the minimum level of creative authorship to support a copyright claim.
 * The work is in the.