The Copyright Office Proposes Fee Increases
By: Paul E. Thomas
April 2009
After performing a cost study and soliciting public comments, the United States Copyright Office has proposed to increase fees for certain filings. The most notable of the changes is that the Office wants to move from a two-avenue scheme for basic registrations (electronic filings and filings submitted by mail) to offer a three-avenue scheme for basic registrations with three different fees: the total electronic “eCO” process, the Form CO process (which is a hybrid form that is completed online but then printed and mailed), and the traditional paper form mail-in process. In the current scheme, the traditional paper filings are grouped with Form CO filings, because both were submitted in hard copy via U.S. Mail.
The total electronic “eCO” process requires the least amount of administrative labor, so it has the lowest filing fee, $35. The Office wants to encourage more electronic filings, and therefore it is maintaining the “eCO” filing fee at its 2008 level without change.
To use the Form CO, the applicant completes the form online, prints the form in hardcopy, mails it in with the deposit, and the Office draws the information from the form by scanning barcodes created when the applicant filled out the form. Because of the labor required for the scanning and administrative processing of Form CO, the Office wants to raise the Form CO filing fee from $45 to $50.
Traditional paper filings without barcodes require the most administrative attention from Office staff, and therefore the Office wants to distinguish such filings from Form CO filings and to charge a higher fee for them: $65.
The proposed changes are scheduled to go into effect on August 1, 2009.