GlossaryGuide

A procedure that allows certain copyright owners to file an action for infringement and to seek statutory damages and attorney’s fees in cases where the work was infringed before the copyright owner completed the work and released it to the public. Preregistration is entirely optional. It is neither a prerequisite nor a precondition for copyright owners who wish to register their works with the U.S. Copyright Office. In other words, an original work of authorship may be registered regardless of whether the work has been preregistered or not. Copyright owners may benefit from this procedure if they have started to create a work of authorship that has not been completed yet, and if it is likely that a third party may infringe that work before it has been released to the public. But in order to preserve the benefits of this procedure, the copyright owner must seek an actual registration for the work shortly after it has been published or infringed. For the vast majority of copyright owners, preregistration is not useful. To be eligible for preregistration, a work of authorship must fall within one or more of the following classes of works:

(i) motion pictures;

(ii) sound recordings;

(iii) musical compositions;

(iv) literary works being prepared for publication in book form;

(v) computer programs (including videogames); or (vi) advertising or marketing photographs.

Works that do not fall within these classes are not eligible for this procedure.