Best Business Practices for Photographers [159]
Figure 17.14
In Figure 17.15, if the copyright office has a question or concern, this is the address and other contact information they will use to correspond with you about it. Otherwise, this field will not really be used for anything.
Figure 17.15
For Figure 17.16, if you're having someone legally act on your behalf to fill out and sign the form, they should choose Authorized Agent, or if you have rights to the work being registered, choose the Other Copyright Claimant or Owner of Exclusive Right(s) option. In all likelihood, you'll choose Author and be done with it.
Figure 17.16
For Figure 17.17, enter your name as you'll sign it below. For the date, we leave the 00 in the field, just to remind us that it's not complete until we know when we are going to the LOC to drop off the package. If you're registering work and mailing/shipping it to the Copyright Office, enter in the date you signed the document. The actual date of registration is the date the Copyright Office receives the form. For me, I sign it the day I am taking it down and dropping it off to them by hand, so the effective registration date and this date match.
Figure 17.17
Figure 17.18 is important because it is this field that will show through the window of the envelope they use to send back your completed registration form. So, type clearly and include your ZIP+4 zip code (obtainable at www.usps.com) to make it arrive faster and more efficiently. Further, when you key in your address to get your Zip+4, you'll get how the post office prefers to have your address look. Follow their lead on this.
Figure 17.18
At this point, you have your own PDF template. Save it as such. You'll more than likely never go back to change almost all of the fields, save for the ones I am about to outline. This makes these few changes fast, simple, and efficient. Now, on to the fields for which there are changes.
Title of the Work
I considered a number of methodologies to determine my nomenclature for naming my registrations. I consulted a number of people on the subject, most notably photographer Jeff Sedlik, who is also an expert in copyright litigation. He's not an attorney, but when it comes to copyright, he's an invaluable resource if you are taking someone to court and need an expert on the subject. I considered the following titles for my registrations when cataloging an entire year's worth of work:
John Harrington 1999 Collection 01 11,841 Photographs
John Harrington 1999 Catalog 01 11,841 Photographs
John Harrington 1999 Volume 01 11,841 Photographs
Although technically the title of your work does not matter to the Copyright Office—and further, it does not affect the rights you have—there's a problem with these titles. Using the words volume, catalog, or collection might cause the person you're suing (or more correctly, his or her lawyer) to attempt to make the claim that their infringement of six of your photographs from that registration is only a single infringement of a collective work, which would limit your statutory award to a maximum of $150,000, whether it's six or sixty images infringed from that registration. Although this is not likely—in fact, I'd go so far as to say it'd be unlikely—avoiding that risk simply by being clearer in your title would be beneficial.
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NOTE
A word about the inevitable infringement you'll experience. Although there is no case law I am aware of, and you are technically protected just as much by registering a single image as you are 10,000, this argument—that multiple images infringed that were a part of a single registration only qualify as one infringement of one work—regardless of titling, could be a method of diminishing your damages. Further, where there is a maximum award of $150,000 per infringement, and you registered 1,000 images in that single registration, an attorney on the other side might try to divide $150,000 by 1,000 and argue to your attorney and perhaps