Claims to copyright in either published or unpublished poetry may be registered in the Copyright Office.

Published collections of poetry and all other copyrightable elements of a unit of publication may be registered on a single form with a single fee if all the poems are owned by the same copyright claimant.

Unpublished collections of two or more poems may be submitted for registration on a single form with a single fee and deposit of one complete copy or phonorecord only if all the following conditions are met:

1. The elements are assembled in an orderly form;
2. The combined elements bear a single title identifying the collection as a whole;
3. The copyright claimant in all of the elements and in the collection as a whole is the same; and
4. All the elements are by the same author, or, if they are by different authors, at least one of the authors has contributed copyrightable authorship to each of the elements.

Registration of an unpublished collection of compositions extends the benefits of registration to each copyrightable selection in the collection, but only the collection title appears in the Copyright Office catalogs and indexes.

See Circular 1, Copyright Basics, for further information on copyright, deposit requirements, and registration procedures. See SL-35 for registration options. See Circular 4, Copyright Office Fees, for current fees.*

FL-106, Revised June 2008