The Office will accept an application that provides representative names and identifies the number of additional authors included in the claim (e.g., “John Jones, Will Smith, Fred Johnson, and thirty-five other contributors”). However, the registration specialist will not add missing names to the application, even if the authors’ contributions are clearly specified in the deposit copy(ies) or elsewhere in the registration materials.
NOTE: One district court has concluded that if the applicant does not identify each author in the application, the registration does not cover any portion of the work that was created by an unnamed author. See Muench Photography, Inc. v. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co., 712 F. Supp. 2d 84, 94–95 (S.D.N.Y. 2010), abrogated on other grounds by Reed Elsevier, Inc. v. Muchnick, 559 U.S. 154, 157 (2010);
The Fourth and Ninth Circuits have reached the opposite conclusion, holding that a registration for a collective work may cover the constituent elements of that work even if the authors of those elements are not specified in the registration. See Alaska Stock, LLC v. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co., 747 F.3d 673, 685 (9th Cir. 2014); Bean v. Pearson Education, Inc., 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 19869, at *2 (9th Cir. Oct. 10, 2014); Bean v. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Co., 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 19858, at *2 (9th Cir. Oct. 10, 2014); Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc. v. American Home Realty Network, LLC, 722 F.3d 591, 599–600 (4th Cir. 2013); Craigslist Inc. v. 3Taps Inc., 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 61837, at **34 (N.D. Cal. Apr. 30, 2013). 614 Works Made for Hire
614.1 Completing the Application: Works Made for Hire
This Section provides guidance on completing an application to register a work made for hire. For a definition of works made for hire, see Chapter 500, Section 506. For guidance in determining whether a particular work qualifies as a work made for hire, see Chapter 500, Section 506.4.
A work made for hire may be registered with an online application or with a paper application submitted on Forms TX, VA, PA, SR, or SE.
The Single Application may not be used to register a work made for hire. For a discussion of the Single Application, see Chapter 1400, Section 1402.5.
614.1(A) Year of Completion and Date of Publication
The term for a work made for hire is based on the year that the work was created or the date that the work was published. Therefore, the applicant must provide this information when completing an online application or a paper application. For guidance on completing this portion of the application, see Sections 611 and 612.
614.1(B) Identifying the Author of a Work Made for Hire
When completing an application the employer or the party that ordered or commissioned the work should be named as the author (rather than the individual who actually created the work). In other words, if the work was created by an employee acting within the scope of his or her employment, the employer should be identified as the author (not the employee). If the work was specially ordered or commissioned as
