Copyright Aid

Hello.

I published a quiz book on a self publishing website called Publishdrive. They flagged the book as public domain. I wrote to them and said it it as original book which took ages to write. I wrote it for fun - it is not a get rich quick self published book!

They now want a copyright registration certificate. I explained that I live in the UK, using a UK bought ISBN and that the UK does not have a copyright registration system, it is applied automatically; and this is valid in other countries due to various copyright treaties.

But, they still want a copyright registration certificate and have sent me links to two websites: copyright.eu and the US copyright office.

Is there anyway to avoid paying a load of money for a certificate from these two websites? Can I even buy one from them?

Hi gle.

These publishers seem a bit knuckleheaded if they are insisting on some kind of copyright registration - which is not even needed in the USA unless you wanted to sue someone and claim statutory damages*. The Berne Convention, to which both the USA and the UK are signatories, stipulates that copyright protection is not to be subject to any formalities (see Article 5 (2)).

But if you feel it is essential to comply then I would go with the US Copyright Office option. This will cost you $45 for an electronic filing. The US Copyright Office is a government agency and its registrations are automatically recognised by the US courts as prima facie evidence of copyright ownership (see section 410(c)). The second advantage of a USCO registration is that once registered anyone can consult the register and see that you are the copyright owner. This together with a copyright notice printed in the book (again not legally essential, but advisible) means that an infringer could not run a defence of not knowing the work was subject to copyright.

The other URL, copyright.eu, relates to just one of many commercial companies which offer a 'registration' service which has very little legal validity beyond being evidence that the work in question existed as at a certain date (ie it is timestamped). But because no statutory declarations are required concerning any authorship claims, these commercial registrations are weak protection at best. They are better suited to things like designs of physical objects where the priority of one design over another is based on the date of creation of the design documents in each case.



*As a non US citizen you have this protection in the USA automatically without registration, you just wouldn't be able to claim statutory damages..

Thank you Andy for the in depth reply as always!