618.7 (C) Asserting a Claim to Copyright in a Serial Publication
This Section discusses the procedure for asserting a claim to copyright in a single issue of a serial publication. A serial publication is a work that is published or intended to be published at regular or stated intervals on an indefinite basis where each issue is numbered or dated consecutively, such as a newspaper, magazine, or newsletter. 37 C.F.R. § 202.3 (B) (1)(v).
If the applicant intends to register a single issue of a serial publication, then as discussed in Section 609.1, the applicant should select Single Serial Issue from the drop down menu on the Type of Work screen. When completing a paper application, the applicant should use Form SE, as discussed in Section 609.2
NOTE: These applications may only be used to register an issue that has been published, and they may only be used to register an issue that qualifies as a collective work. If the issue does not satisfy these requirements, then as discussed in Sections 609.1 and 609.2, the applicant should use Form TX or the online application for a “Literary Work.”
If the applicant intends to register the authorship involved in selecting, coordinating, and/or arranging the content that appears within the issue as a whole, the applicant should check the box marked “Collective Work Authorship.”
If the applicant intends to register the authorship involved in creating the issue as a whole, and one or more of the contribution(s) that were first published in that issue, the applicant should check the box marked “Collective Work Authorship and Component Work(s) authored or fully owned by the Collective Work Author.” Specifically, this box may be used to register the authorship involved in selecting, coordinating, and/or arranging the content that appears within the issue as well as the individual contributions within the issue, (I) if the copyright in the contributions and the collective work are owned by the same claimant, and (ii) if the component works have not been previously published, previously registered, and are not in the public domain.
For representative examples that demonstrate how to complete the Author Created field and the Nature of Authorship space in an application to register a single serial issue together with the contributions that appear within that issue, see Section 618.7 (D).
NOTE: As a general rule, if the claimant owns the copyright in the individual contribution(s), but does not own the copyright in the issue as a whole, the applicant must submit a separate application for each contribution. In some cases, it may be possible to register multiple contributions using the group registration options for contributions to periodicals or published or unpublished photographs. For information concerning these options, and the group registration options for serials, newspapers, and newsletters, see Chapter 1100, Sections 1107, 1108, 1109, 1110, and 1114.