304(a), and on a Copyright Office regulation which provides the manner in which renewal registrations may be corrected, 37 C.F.R. § 201.5(b)(2)(iv), she argues that because the renewal certificate described the Foundation as the “proprietor of a work made for hire” rather than as the “proprietor of a composite work”, the renewal registration is not valid.
The regulation upon which Maaherra relies, provided in 1983:
Supplementary registration to correct a renewal claimant or basis of a claim in a basic renewal registration may be made only if the application for supplementary registration and fee are received in the Copyright Office within the statutory time limits for renewal. If the error or omission in a basic renewal registration is extremely minor, and does not involve the identity of the renewal claimant or the legal basis of the claim, supplementary registration may be made at any time. Supplementary registration is not appropriate to add a renewal claimant.
37 C.F.R. § 201.5(b)(2)(iv) (1983). The regulation would thus have permitted the Foundation to file a supplementary registration to correct its basic registration at any time during the renewal period, if the error was minor and did not “involve the identity of the renewal claimant or the legal basis for the claim.” Id. However, corrections to the “identity” of the claimant or to the “legal basis of the claim” could only have been made within the statutory time limits for renewal, which in this case would have expired December 31, 1983.
Maaherra claims that because the error the Foundation made in describing the nature of its proprietorship involves “the legal basis of the claim,” the error can no longer be corrected, and therefore, the Book was injected into the public domain in 1983. There are serious problems with this argument.
First, it is not at all clear that the regulation’s reference to the “legal basis of the claim” contemplates the identification of a particular type of proprietorship described in the first proviso of section 304(a). Given the structure of the statute, the general term “proprietor” was probably sufficient to identify the “legal basis” of the renewal claim in 1983.
Moreover, we have found no case that has ever held a renewal invalid for lack of an adequate description of the basis of the claim. The only cases in which renewals have been forfeited have involved renewals filed by the wrong claimant, not by someone describing the wrong type of proprietorship. The second proviso of section 304(a) establishes the priority to renewal rights for authors and their statutory heirs. There are cases holding renewal registrations under this proviso void, where the renewal was filed in the name of a person who was a member of the next succeeding class, when members of a priority class living at the time the renewal vested should have filed the renewal, but did not. See Nimmer § 9.05[D][1] at 9-85 (citing, inter alia, Marks Music Corp. v. Borst Music Pub. Co. Inc., 110 F.Supp. 913 (D.N.J.1953); Yardley v. Houghton Mifflin Co., 25 F.Supp. 361 (S.D.N.Y.1938), aff’d, 108 F.2d 28 (2d Cir.1939)). In such cases, however, in contrast to the situation here, the person filing for renewal was not statutorily entitled to renew under any theory; someone else was. See International Film Exch., Ltd. v. Corinth Films, Inc., 621 F.Supp. 631 (S.D.N.Y.1985) (rejecting renewal application because the renewal was filed in the name of a licensee, instead of being filed in the name of the author, or by the copyright proprietor). As we have seen, the Foundation was in fact a proper renewal claimant because it was the “proprietor” of the Book both in 1955 and in 1983.
Furthermore, even the requirement of accurate identification of the renewal claimant has not been rigidly enforced. In at least one case, the actual name of the claimant corporation was mistakenly stated in the renewal application, yet the infringement action was permitted to go forward. Bourne Co. v. Walt Disney Co., 25 U.S.P.Q.2d 1975, 1976 (S.D.N.Y.1992), aff’d on other grounds, 68 F.3d 621 (2d Cir.1995), cert. denied, — U.S. —, 116 S.Ct. 1890, 135 L.Ed.2d 184 (1996). See also Nimmer, § 9.05[D][1] at 9-85–86, (favorably citing Bourne for refusing to cause a forfeiture of copyright based on “useless technicalities”).
