Copyright Pre-Registration for Book Authors and the New Electronic Filing System Tests

I've often gone on at length - I'm sure people are bracing themselves now, but hang on, as there's no need - about the importance of registering copyright to protect yourself. But intellectual property piracy is a big problem - for example, the last book in the Harry Potter series ended up online before it hit the stores, and the publishers were doing everything they could to keep it under wraps.

So if you register a work as of a publication date, but it's pirated before the date, could that affect your rights under US copyright law? Apparently it can, so the Copyright Office, under the Artists' Rights and Theft Prevention Act of 2005, offers pre-registration for certain categories of works, including "literary works in book form":

Pursuant to the provisions of the Artists' Rights and Theft Prevention Act of 2005, the Register of Copyrights, after determining appropriate classes of works which have a history of infringement prior to commercial distribution, permits preregistration of unpublished works within such classes. Preregistration is not a substitute for registration; its purpose is to allow an infringement action to be brought before the authorized commercial distribution of a work and full registration thereof, and to make it possible, upon full registration, for the copyright owner to receive statutory damages and attorneys' fees in an infringement action.

A person who has preregistered a work is required, in order to preserve the legal benefits of preregistration, to register such work within one month after the copyright owner becomes aware of infringement and no later than three months after first publication. If full registration is not made within the prescribed time period, a court must dismiss an action for copyright infringement that occurred before or within the first two months after first publication. See U.S.C. 17 408(f), 411 and 412, as amended; also 37 C.F.R. 202.16, as added.

To be a bit emphatic for a moment, this doesn't replace copyright registration. But it does extend the full protection of the law, including statutory damages, backwards before publication. It's a reasonable step to take. For more information, go to this page on the US Copyright web site. You could also register copyright for the manuscript before publication and then register a second time the published book as a work based on the unpublished manuscript. But it's good to know about this option.

Also, for whoever is interested, I just received an email that I'm on the beta test list for the new electronic copyright registration system. I've just set up an account and am waiting for the Copyright Office to give me a call and say that I'm set to try registering some items.

It looks as though you'll be able to process all the paperwork online, pay via credit card, and track where things are, at least so far as I can tell from the little of the user interface I've seen. You'll be able to register a claim, file a preregistration (as mentioned above), check a submission status, track and track the status of various things. As I learn more, I'll file further reports.