616.1 The Author’s Year of Birth
When completing an application to register a work with the U.S. Copyright Office, the applicant will be asked to identify the year that the author was born. This information may be useful in identifying the author of the work. Providing the author’s year of birth is optional and an application will be accepted even if this portion of the application is left blank.
If the applicant provides the author’s year of birth, the registration specialist will not question that date unless it is obviously wrong (e.g., the date of birth provided is the current year).