Page:Copyright Office Compendium 3rd Edition - Full.djvu/276

, Third Edition Examples: Other unspecific authorship statements


 * An application is submitted for a, naming St. John Sinclair as the author of “everything.” A statement on the deposit copy reads “text and artwork by St. John Sinclair.” The registration specialist may register the claim with an annotation, such as: “Regarding author information: copy states ‘Text and artwork by St. John Sinclair.’”
 * An application is submitted for a work of the performing arts, naming Albert Ferraro as the author of “entire project.” The deposit copy contains music and a statement on the reads “by Al Ferraro.” The registration specialist may register the claim with an annotation, such as: “Regarding author information: copy contains music.”
 * An application is submitted naming Patricia Feinstein as the author of a “website.” The deposit copy contains text and two-dimensional artwork, and Patricia appears to be the sole author of this work. The registration specialist will ask the applicant to provide a more specific authorship statement, such as “text, 2-D artwork.”
 * An application is submitted for a work titled Neurological Examination Simplified. Jason Mackray is named as the author of “a guide to help neurologists conduct quick and simple assessments.” A statement on the deposit copy reads “by Jason Mackray; illustrations by Susan Talbot.” The registration specialist may communicate with the applicant to determine if Susan’s name should be added to the application and to request a more specific authorship statement, such as “text” for Jason and “2-D artwork” for Susan.

618.8(B)&emsp;Percentage of Authorship

The U.S. Copyright Office strongly discourages from using numerical percentages to describe an author’s contribution to a work, such as “music by Joe Goldie (50%); lyrics by Pepe Greenwald: (50%).” As discussed in, a copyright may be registered by or on behalf of the author of the work or a person or entity that owns all rights under the copyright that initially belonged to the author. 37 C.F.R. § 202.3(a)(3). Providing percentages in the Author Created field or the Nature of Authorship space may imply that the work is a or it may raise a question as to whether the person or persons named in the application contributed  authorship to the work or whether the  owns all of the  in the work.

If the applicant provides a percentage in the Author Created field or the Nature of Authorship space, the may register the  without communicating with the applicant if it is clear that the authors named in the application contributed copyrightable authorship to the work and if the work appears to be jointly owned. The percentage is considered superfluous, because it presumably refers to some allocation among the co-authors or co-owners of the copyright, rather than an allocation of the ownership in the copyright as a whole. Chapter 600 : 144