To copyright your work, file an application with the U.S. Copyright Office through its online eCO system at copyright.gov, upload a copy of the work as your deposit, and pay a filing fee that runs from $45 to $85 for most electronic submissions. Your work is already protected by copyright the moment you fix it in a tangible form, but registration is what gives you the ability to sue for infringement in federal court and collect statutory damages and attorney’s fees.
Why Register If Copyright Is Automatic
Federal law protects an original work as soon as it is written down, recorded, saved to a hard drive, or otherwise fixed in a medium that lets someone perceive or reproduce it later. No paperwork, no © symbol, and no mailing is required for that baseline protection.
Registration exists because automatic protection has hard limits. You cannot file a copyright infringement lawsuit in federal court until the Copyright Office has either issued a registration or refused your application. The Supreme Court confirmed this in Fourth Estate v. Wall-Street.com (2019), holding that submitting an application alone is not enough.
Registration timing also controls the money side. Register within three months of first publication, or before the infringement starts, and you preserve the right to seek statutory damages and attorney’s fees. Miss that window and you’re limited to proving actual financial losses, which are often hard to quantify and expensive to litigate. Statutory damages run from $750 to $30,000 per work infringed, and up to $150,000 for willful infringement. Register within five years of publication and your certificate counts as presumptive proof that the copyright is valid.
What You Can Register
Copyright covers original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium. “Original” doesn’t mean groundbreaking; it means you created the work independently and it has at least a minimal spark of creativity. The categories are broad:
- Literary works, including books, articles, blog posts, and computer programs
- Musical works, including compositions and lyrics
- Dramatic works, including plays and screenplays
- Choreographic works and pantomimes
- Visual arts, including paintings, photographs, sculptures, illustrations, and architectural designs
- Audiovisual works, including films, video games, and online videos
- Sound recordings
Each requires that the work exist in some fixed form. A melody you hum but never record isn’t protected. The same melody saved as a voice memo is.
What Falls Outside Copyright
Copyright protects expression, not the underlying ideas, facts, or methods. You can copyright a novel about time travel but not the concept of time travel. The Copyright Office is explicit that names, titles, slogans, and short phrases fall outside copyright protection, though some of these may qualify for trademark protection under a different system. A bare list of ingredients, a standard calendar, or a height-and-weight chart also won’t qualify.
Work That Involves AI Tools
If you used artificial intelligence in your creative process, the human-authored portions of your work can still be registered. Purely AI-generated material cannot, because copyright requires a human author. Using AI as an assistive tool doesn’t disqualify your work; the question is whether you exercised meaningful creative control over the expressive elements, which the Copyright Office evaluates case by case.
When your work contains more than a trivial amount of AI-generated material, you must disclose it on the application. Describe the human contribution in the “Author Created” field and exclude the AI-generated portions in the “Limitation of the Claim” section. Failing to disclose can lead the Office to cancel your registration or a court to disregard it in an infringement case.
What to Gather Before You File
Have this information ready before you log in. Incomplete submissions trigger correspondence from the Office and can add months to processing time.
- Title of the work. Pick something specific; generic placeholders like “Untitled” make your registration hard to find in public records.
- Author information, meaning the full legal name of every author. You can use a pen name or stage name if you check the “Pseudonymous” box.
- Claimant information. If the person filing isn’t the author, identify the copyright claimant and briefly explain how they acquired ownership, such as a written agreement, inheritance, or other transfer.
- Year the work was completed, which affects the duration of protection.
- Work-made-for-hire status. If the work was created by an employee within the scope of employment, or under a qualifying written agreement for certain commissioned works, the employer or commissioning party owns the copyright.
- Deposit copy of the work itself. Unpublished works need one complete copy. Published works generally need two copies of the “best edition,” meaning the highest-quality version available.
Filing the Application
The Copyright Office strongly prefers electronic filing through its eCO (Electronic Copyright Office) system. Paper forms still exist, including Form TX for literary works, Form VA for visual arts, Form PA for performing arts, and Form SR for sound recordings, but they cost more and take significantly longer to process.
Filing Online Through eCO
Go to copyright.gov, log in to the eCO Registration System, and create an account if you don’t have one. Work through the application screens, entering the title, author details, claimant, year of completion, and authorship description. For most works, you can upload the deposit copy as a digital file directly through the system. Pay the filing fee by credit card, debit card, or electronic transfer through Pay.gov. Once payment processes, you’ll receive email confirmation that the Office has your claim.
Filing by Mail
If you file on paper, your application form, deposit copies, and payment must all arrive in the same package at the Library of Congress address printed on the form. Paper applications cost more and enter a slower queue, so this route only makes sense if you have a specific reason to avoid electronic filing.
After You Submit
The Copyright Office reviews your application for completeness and examines whether the work meets the legal requirements for registration. If everything checks out, you’ll receive a Certificate of Registration. If the examiner finds a problem, you’ll get correspondence asking for clarification or additional information. If the work is found ineligible, the Office issues a refusal, which you can appeal. Regardless of how long processing takes, the effective date of your registration is the day the Office received your complete application, fee, and deposit in acceptable form.
What Registration Costs
Fees vary by how you file and the complexity of the claim:
- Single-author online filing: $45. This rate applies when a single author is also the sole claimant, the application covers one work, and the work is not made for hire.
- Standard online application: $65. This covers everything else filed electronically, including works with multiple authors.
- Paper filing: $125 per application.
- Group registration of unpublished works: $85 for up to ten works by the same author. All works must be unpublished, in the same category, and share the same author and claimant information. This is useful for photographers, musicians, and other creators who produce in volume.
Expedited Processing
If you need registration fast because of pending litigation, a customs issue, or a contractual deadline, the Office offers “special handling” for an additional $800 on top of the standard fee. You must state your specific reason in the request. The Office grants it only when a genuine deadline requires it.
How Long Registration Takes
Processing speed depends on how you file and whether the examiner needs to follow up. Based on the most recent published data from the Copyright Office:
- Electronic filing with digital deposit and no issues: roughly 1 to 3 months on average.
- Electronic filing requiring correspondence: roughly 3.5 months on average, sometimes past 8 months.
- Paper filing with no issues: roughly 4 months on average.
- Paper filing requiring correspondence: roughly 8.5 months on average, sometimes exceeding 19 months.
The single biggest factor in speed is a clean application. Errors and missing information cause the delays.
Adding a Copyright Notice
Since the United States joined the Berne Convention in 1989, a copyright notice on your work has not been required for protection. Adding one is still worthwhile because it eliminates the “innocent infringement” defense, where someone claims they didn’t know the work was copyrighted and asks the court to reduce damages.
A proper notice has three elements: the symbol © or the word “Copyright,” the year of first publication, and the name of the copyright owner. For example: © 2026 Jane Smith. It costs nothing to include.
Skip the “Poor Man’s Copyright”
Mailing a copy of your work to yourself in a sealed envelope, sometimes called “poor man’s copyright,” is not a substitute for registration. It does not create a public record, does not establish a presumption of validity, and does not unlock statutory damages or the ability to file a lawsuit. If your work matters enough to protect, register it with the Copyright Office.