IP Law Daily, COPYRIGHT NEWS: Office proposes lower fee for recording documents with electronic title lists, (Aug 23, 2017)

By Thomas Long, J.D.

The U.S. Copyright Office has submitted a proposal to Congress to establish a separate, lower fee for documents submitted for recordation that are accompanied by an electronic title list; that is, a list of certain indexing information about the copyrighted works to which such documents pertain. According to the proposed schedule and analysis submitted on August 18, these lists save Office staff from needing to find and input this information manually. The Office said that it anticipates that a lower fee will incentivize more remitters to use these electronic lists, which should help the Office to improve its processing efficiency. The Office also anticipates that a lower fee should result in an increase in documents submitted for recordation.

For well over a century, the Office has recorded documents pertaining to works under copyright, such as assignments, licenses, and grants of security interests. Under the Copyright Act, recordation of these documents is voluntary, but doing so provides certain legal benefits, such as constructive notice of the facts stated in the recorded document when certain conditions are met. Although the Office announced plans this May for an electronic recordation system, the recordation system is still generally paper-based, requiring data to be input manually into digital form to permit indexing in the public catalog. The Office’s proposal focuses on a specific type of information being recorded, called a "title appendix," which is a list of the titles of and related information for copyrighted works associated with the document submitted for recordation. A title appendix can contain hundreds or thousands of titles, the Office said, and manual entry has been a significant contributor to long processing times.

In 2014, to gain efficiencies, the Office promulgated a new rule permitting documents submitted for recordation to be accompanied by an electronic title list in the form of an Excel spreadsheet. Document recordation fees, however, were last adjusted before the introduction of electronic title lists, so the Office has never set a separate fee for recording documents with such lists.

"Although the Office is currently undertaking a comprehensive study of all Copyright Office costs and fees, which is expected to be completed and submitted to Congress next year, this limited fee proposal is being submitted now to allow the Office to more quickly implement a reduced recordation fee for electronic title lists," the Office said. "Adopting such a fee will incentivize remitters to provide such electronic lists, which are quicker to process than paper title appendices."

The baseline fine for recordation of documents would remain the same for now, at $105 for a single title and $35 for additional titles (per group of 1 to 10 titles). These fees are currently being evaluated as part of a full fee study to be submitted to Congress next year. The new proposed fees for additional titles provided in an electronic title list would be based on the number of additional titles: $60 for 1 to 50; $225 for 51 to 500; $390 for 501 to 1,000; $555 for 1,001 to 10,000; and $5,550 for 10,001 or more.

Pursuant to 17 U.S.C. §708(b), the Register of Copyrights may institute the new fee 120 days after the proposed schedule is submitted to Congress unless Congress enacts a law within the 120-day period stating that it does not approve the schedule. The Office seeks to implement the new fee on or about December 18, 2017.

News: Copyright FedTracker IP