Copyright form PA and multiple songs?

[Jacklin Studios]

To date, I have been registering each composition I write with a separate submission of a Form PA (or SR if I want to copyright both the composition and a recording of it) to the US Copyright office.

Upon re-reading the form instructions it would appear that I can register several compositions simultaneously, by registering them as a collection.

Is anyone doing this? Does anyone have any guidelines about the copyright forms? Any pointers to books covering this issue would also be helpful...

[Releaux]

{EDIT: On re-reading my post, I'd like to emphasize right up here at the top that this is one of those cases where it's really best to talk to a lawyer, preferably one who specializes in copyright law. With mega corporations and conglomerate associations purchasing new copyright legislation like the DMCA, even things that were true six months ago may no longer be. I'm not a lawyer, and I recommend you talk to someone who is about protecting your artistic creations. Now that that's out of the way... }

This is one of those "legal technicality" areas of copyright law. You can use forms SR or PA to register a collection of works, and all of the underlying works in the collection will be protected.

It has been my experience, however, that most copyright lawyers will advise you to file for each work individually.

Doing a quick Google on "form pa collection of songs" got me this page as the first result. Here's the relevant paragraph from that article:

As I mentioned, filing a Form PA costs $30 per transaction. That can get pretty expensive if you••™re filing one song per transaction and are a particularly prolific writer••¦ the old mail-the-tune-to-yourself option might begin to look like a favorable option.

But don••™t do it! Here••™s a trick I learned early on in my days as a Writer/Publisher Relations geek at BMI and SESAC: In a single transaction, you can register a bunch of songs as a collection of works. Here••™s how it works: using Form PA, you can supply the Copyright Office with information on a collection of works.

For this to work, all songs must appear under one general title (e.g. Joe Smedley••™s First Collection), have the same copyright claimant, and all songs must be by the same writer (or, if there••™s more than one writer, at least one author must have written part of each of the songs in the collection). All of the songs in Joe Smedley••™s First Collection will receive copyright protection.

However, there is a solvable problem with this method: songs filed as a collection using Form PA will not be listed individually at the Copyright Office. Therefore, in order to perform a copyright search for a specific song in a collection, you••™ll need to know which collection the song is in.

This can get tricky as the years go by, when you may end up with several collections. Though you should always maintain accurate records of such information on your own, there is a way to rectify this problem. Once you••™ve gotten your copyright certification back from the Copyright Office, indicating that your collection has been registered, you can file Form CA and attach a list of the songs in your collection. By registering in this way, the Copyright Office will be able to tell you in which collection particular songs reside. Filing Form CA costs $65.

(Paragraph breaks added by me for legibility)

I'm not a lawyer, though, and I don't know the expertise of the author of that page, so my advice to you would be to schedule a 30 minute appointment with your local IP Lawyer and get an official opinion - it should cost you less than $150 and could save you a lot of money in future registrations.

<small>[ January 14, 2005, 05:25 PM: Message edited by: Ray Toler ]</small>

[Jacklin Studios]

Thanks, Ray, I've come to the same conclusion, and will be contacting a copyright attourney.

[johnnytucats]

I can understand why someone would want to protect their songs by registering them.

However, most publishing houses don't bother unless the song is actually released or used in a money-making way. In that case, they'll register the song separately.

[mesasand]

You're absolutely right - record labels won't usually bother registering new songs until the CD is out - then they'll send the whole thing in on an SR form.

Here's the key: You can do the PA form, but every song has to have the same authors - if anything's different, it won't work. But for most people's CDs, it varies - the drummer and the vocalist wrote one, the vocalist and guitarist wrote two, etc. For that, you can use the SR form and copy everything at once - recording, artwork, etc.

But what if you have cover tunes on it? Yep, the SR form still works, but you have to fill it out a little differently. I have an example posted on my .Mac group called the Indie Artist Corner. Email me if you'd like to see it and I'll invite you to be a member.