Mockingbird Press, LLC
II. ADMINISTRATIVE RECORD
On December 8, 2019, Mockingbird Press filed an application to register a copyright claim in the Work. Ina January 14, 2020 letter, a Copyright Office registration specialist refused to register the claim, finding that the Work does not contain the minimum amount of original authorship required for copyright protection. Initial Letter Refusing Registration from U.S. Copyright Office to John Kraft (Jan. 14, 2020).
Ina letter dated April 13, 2020, Mockingbird Press requested that the Office reconsider its initial refusal to register the Work. Letter from John Kraft to U.S. Copyright Office (Apr. 13, 2020) ("First Request"). After reviewing the Work in light of the points raised in the First Request, the Office re-evaluated the claims and again concluded that the Work "does not contain a sufficient amount of original and creative compilation authorship to support a copyright registration." Refusal of First Request for Reconsideration from U.S. Copyright Office to John Kraft at 1 (Sept. 17, 2020).
In a letter dated November 12, 2020, Mockingbird Press requested that, pursuant to 37 C.F.R. § 202.5(c), the Office reconsider for a second time its refusal to register the Work. Letter from John Kraft to U.S. Copyright Office (Nov. 12, 2020) ("Second Request"). In that letter, Mockingbird Press argued, "the [author used creative judgment in selecting from a 'large diverse pool of material,' and coordinated the material in an original way." Id. at 2. Mockingbird Press further stated that "the [author utilized her own original standards in the placement of images and text within the original works to create a more useful presentation of the existing material and used her own subjective standards to determine what material was appropriate for inclusion." Id.
Upon reviewing the Second Request, the Board determined that it was unable to determine whether the author contributed additional images and text to the public domain works and asked Mockingbird Press to identify the new material in more detail. Email from U.S. Copyright Office to John Kraft (Mar. 29, 2022). In response, Mockingbird Press explained that the author did not add new images or text to the public domain works, but instead the author changed "the layout of existing material, or images present in the underlying works [and] obtained [existing images] in a visually enhanced form." Letter from John Kraft to U.S. Copyright Office (Apr. 29, 2022).
III. DISCUSSION
After carefully examining the Work, considering the arguments made in the First and Second Requests, and the communications with Mockingbird Press for clarification, the Board finds that the Work does not contain the requisite authorship necessary to sustain a claim to copyright.
A work may be registered if it qualifies as an "original work[] of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression." 17 U.S.C. § 102(a). In the copyright context, the term "original" consists of two components: independent creation and sufficient creativity. See Feist Publ'ns, Inc. v. Rural Tel. Serv. Co., Inc., 499 U.S. 340, 345 (1991). First, the work must have
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