- HOW TO COPYRIGHT YOUR WORK UNDER A PEN NAME REGISTRATION
- HOW TO COPYRIGHT YOUR WORK UNDER A PEN NAME PLUS
HOW TO COPYRIGHT YOUR WORK UNDER A PEN NAME REGISTRATION
You may do so in 1 of 3 ways: using the online electronic Copyright Office (eCO), downloading fill-in Form CO and completing it on your personal computer or obtaining a paper registration form from the Copyright Office. If you don't register within this time, you'll be unable to bring suit against an offending party until more than 2 months have passed since you published your work.įile your registration with the Copyright Office. Once you pre-register your work, you must register the copyright within 3 months of publishing it or within a month after you learn someone has infringed your copyright.You can get a certified copy of the notice from the Copyright Office's Certifications and Documents section. The e-mail notice will include the information you sent, a preregistration number and the date on which preregistration became effective. Once the Copyright Office processes your preregistration application, they will notify you by e-mail.(You do not include the work itself.) For more information about preregistration, see. You can only pre-register a work online by submitting a description of it no more than 2,000 characters (about 330 words) in length and a filing fee, which can be paid by credit card, through the Automated Clearing House (ACH) network or through an account you previously established with the Copyright Office.(This would be most likely if you're writing a book in a genre made popular by the phenomenal success of a particular work, such as the Harry Potter or "Twilight" books.) Preregistration is also available for works of music, sound recordings, computer software, motion pictures and photographs used in marketing or advertising. Preregistration does not replace registration, but it permits you to sue for copyright infringement while your work is still in development if you feel there's a likelihood of someone doing so before you complete it.
HOW TO COPYRIGHT YOUR WORK UNDER A PEN NAME PLUS
If you register a subsequent work using your real name as well as your pen name, previous works written under that pen name are then given copyright protection for the author's life plus 70 years.Ĭonsider pre-registering your work. If you choose not to give your real name at the time you register your copyright, you can provide it to the Copyright Office at a later time.
However, the length of time your work receives copyright protection becomes the same as if you had written and registered it under your real name, the author's life plus another 70 years. If you choose to give your real name, it remains part of the Copyright Office's records and cannot be removed later. If you choose not to give your real name when registering your work, it receives copyright protection for either 95 years from when it was published or 120 years from when it was created, whichever period ends earlier. You do not have to give your real (legal) name to the Copyright Office to register your copyright. In the US, registration allows statutory damages, but the cost of the court case that would lead to statutory damages may well be high enough to make that remedy largely theoretical.Decide whether you want to reveal your name to the Copyright Office. Depending on jurisdiction, registration may not even be available. Different countries have different terms on all this, though.Īnd, yes, you can publish without registering your copyright. If you include your legal name, it will last your life plus 70 years. For example, in the US, if you register copyright only under your pseudonym and don't include your real identity, the copyright will last 95 years from publication (or 120 years from creation). But in some places (mostly the US, as far as I know) there may be benefits to registering your copyright.įor your book, you can register your copyright under your pen name if you want, but it may have implications for how long the copyright will last. You don't need to "get" copyright because you already have it. In general, though:Īssuming you live in a country that's a signatory to the Berne Convention (you probably do), then copyright exists as soon as you write your story down. This may depend a bit based on jurisdiction - the Berne Convention gives the general principles of it all, but different countries (esp.
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