1109.6 (G) Author / Claimant
As discussed in Section 1109.2, all the issues in the group must be created by the same author, and the author and the copyright claimant must be the same person or organization.
The applicant should provide the author/claimant’s name and address in the relevant fields on the Author/Claimant screen. In addition, the applicant should provide a brief statement on the Author/Claimant screen that best describes the author/claimant’s contribution to each issue.
If each issue is a collective work, the applicant may state “collective work” or “collective work authorship” in the “Other” space. A claim in the “collective work” covers the compilation authorship involved in creating the issue as a whole, including the selection, coordination, and/or arrangement of the contributions within each issue. It also covers the authorship in the individual articles, photographs, illustrations, or other contributions – ” if they were first published in the issue and if they are fully owned by the author/claimant when the application is filed.
Alternatively, the applicant may assert a claim in the collective work and the individual contributions by stating “collective work authorship” in the “Other” space and by checking the box for “contribution(s) by the same author and claimant.”
If the applicant states that the newsletter is a collective work, the registration specialist will examine each issue as a whole to determine if it contains sufficient compilation authorship to warrant registration. And the specialist will review the issue to determine whether it contains “a number of contributions” constituting “separate and independent works in themselves.” 17 U.S.C. § 101 (definition of “collective work”); Group Registration of Newsletters, 82 Fed. Reg. 22,902, 22,904 (May 17, 2018).
If the newsletter is not a collective work (as described in Section 1109.2 (A)) or if these terms do not fully describe the copyrightable authorship that the author/claimant contributed to each issue, the applicant may provide a more specific description in the space marked Other.