Educational resources
Two guides for different copyright questions
The Copyright Registration Readiness Guide helps readers prepare for the application process. The Coauthor & Collaboration Ownership Guide focuses on projects created with other people.
Copyright Registration Readiness Guide
This guide helps you identify and organize:
- The work and version being considered
- Authors and contributors
- Employees, contractors, and commissioned work
- The proposed copyright owner and claimant
- Publication information
- Prior editions and registrations
- Previously existing and third-party material
- AI-generated and human-authored material
- Anonymous, pseudonymous, unknown, or uncertain authors
- Ownership records and agreements
- Deposit materials
- Questions that may affect registration readiness
Coauthor & Collaboration Ownership Guide
This guide focuses on creative work developed by two or more people and explains:
- Contributions and potential coauthors
- Joint-authorship questions
- Ownership percentages and separately owned components
- Commissioned contributions
- Assignments, permissions, and licenses
- Credit, compensation, and decision-making
- Multiple versions and editions
- New and carried-forward authorship
- Creating ownership records
- Preparing accurate registration decisions
- Addressing collaborator disagreements
- When legal review is appropriate
Key distinction: Contribution, authorship, ownership percentage, decision-making authority, credit, and compensation are related questions, but they are not the same question.
Attribution is not permission. Credit does not replace permission when permission is legally required.
View the Collaboration GuideHow to use the resources
Bring the facts, records, and questions you can identify
- Choose the guide that fits the project.
Use one or both depending on whether the work involves collaborators or ownership questions. - Gather the available information.
Collect work files, contributor details, agreements, publication dates, prior registrations, and deposit materials. - Mark the areas you cannot answer.
You are not expected to decide legal questions on your own. - Use the information during the consultation.
The consultation identifies the next registration, assessment, or documentation step.
The guides are general educational materials. They do not create an attorney-client relationship and do not replace legal advice concerning a specific work or ownership arrangement.
Next step
Book a Consultation
The consultation includes advance review of a detailed questionnaire, a virtual consultation about the work identified in the questionnaire, and a personalized Copyright Registration Action Plan.
Book a Consultation