1110.2 Eligibility Requirements
A group of contributions that have been published in a periodical may be registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, provided that the following conditions have been met:
• All of the contributions in the group must be created by the same individual.
• The copyright claimant for all the contributions must be the same person or organization.
• The contributions must not be works made for hire.
• Each work must be first published as a contribution to a periodical.
• All of the contributions must be first published within a twelve-month period (e.g., January 1, 2010 through December 31, 2010, February 1, 2011 through January 31, 2012, September 15, 2013 through September 14, 2014, etc.).
• If any of the contributions were published before March 1, 1989, those works must bear a separate copyright notice, the notice must contain the copyright owner’s name (or an abbreviation by which the owner can be recognized or a generally known alternative designation for the owner), and the name that appears in each notice must be the same.
See 37 C.F.R. § 202.4 (G) (1)- (5); Group Registration of Contributions to Periodicals, 81 Fed. Reg. 86,634, 86,638-39 (Dec. 1, 2016).
Works that do not satisfy these requirements cannot be registered using this group registration option.
The regulation establishing this option became effective on January 1, 1978. Contributions published before that date are not eligible for group registration. See Part 202–Registration of Claims to Copyright, Copyright Registrations, 43 Fed. Reg. 965, 966 (Jan. 5, 1978).