Best Business Practices for Photographers [161]
Figure 17.20
I encourage you to make your own determination as to what you want to do with this information and these insights in mind.
Year in Which Creation of This Work Was Completed
This is pretty straightforward. Of course, there are always exceptions. If the assignment started December 31, suppose your assignment was to document the change of the New Year. In that case, your assignment would be completed on January 1 at, say, 1 a.m. Although I would register them with a date of January 1 because that was when the assignment was completed, your attorney might feel differently. Ask your attorney, since he would be the one defending the infringement on your behalf. Figure 17.21 shows this field on the form.
Figure 17.21
Date and Nation of First Publication of This Particular Work
If you're registering unpublished work, leave this section blank and skip over this text. For published work (and I make the assumption that it's published in the USA), as previously noted, a range is acceptable. There is, again, an indication that you may use the continuation form, but it is not required.
Figure 17.22
This, from the Copyright Office:
The Office recognizes that some commenters have previously expressed the view that photographers sometimes have difficulty knowing exactly when—or even whether—a particular photograph has been published. With respect to date of publication, it should be noted that the Office's longstanding practices permit the claimant some flexibility in determining the appropriate date. See, e.g., Compendium of Copyright Office Practices, Compendium II, Sec. 910.02 (1984) (Choice of a date of first publication)…. The Compendium of Copyright Office Practices, Compendium II, Sec. 904 states the Office's general practice with respect to publication, including that "The Office will ordinarily not attempt to decide whether or not publication has occurred but will generally leave this decision to the applicant." 1) Where the applicant is uncertain as to which of several possible dates to choose, it is generally advisable to choose the earliest date, to avoid implication of an attempt to lengthen the copyright term, or any other period prescribed by the statute. 2) When the exact date is not known, the best approximate date may be chosen. In such cases, qualifying language such as "approximately," "on or about," "circa," "no later than," and "no earlier than," will generally not be questioned. Further in the regulations, it states "The date of publication of each work within the group must be identified either on the deposited image, on the application form, or on a continuation sheet, in such a manner that one may specifically identify the date of publication of any photograph in the group. If the photographs in a group were not all published on the same date, the range of dates of publication (e.g., January 1–March 31, 2001) should be provided in space 3b of the application."
Further, this from the Copyright Office's 37 CFR Part 202, [Federal Register: July 17, 2001 (Volume 66, Number 137)] [Rules and Regulations] [Page 37142-37150]:
Each submission for group registration must contain photographs by an individual photographer that were all published within the same calendar year. The claimant(s) for all photographs in the group must be the same. The date of publication for each photograph must be indicated either on the individual image or on the registration application or application continuation