17 U.S.C. § 408 — Copyright registration in general

(a) Registration permissive
At any point while a copyright is still active — whether it was secured before January 1, 1978, or on or after that date — the copyright owner, or the owner of any exclusive right in the work, may register the copyright claim. They do this by sending the Copyright Office the required deposit, plus the application and fee described in sections 409 and 708. Registering is optional: it is not required in order to have copyright protection.

(b) Deposit for copyright registration
Unless subsection (c) says otherwise, the deposit sent with a registration must include: (1) one complete copy or recording, for an unpublished work; (2) two complete copies^* or recordings of the best edition, for a published work; (3) one complete copy or recording as actually published, for a work first published outside the United States; and (4) one complete copy or recording of the best edition of the whole collective work, for a contribution to a collective work. Copies already deposited with the Library of Congress under section 407 can satisfy this deposit requirement too, if they come with the application, fee, and any extra identifying material the Register requires. The Register must also set rules letting copies the Library acquired some other way, under section 407(e), count toward this deposit requirement.

(c) Administrative classification and optional deposit
(1) The Register of Copyrights may, by regulation, sort works into administrative classes for deposit and registration purposes, and decide what kind of copies each class needs. The Register's regulations can require or allow: identifying material instead of full copies, only one copy where two would normally be needed, or a single registration covering a group of related works. This classification only affects deposit and registration procedure — it has no effect on what subject matter copyright protects or what exclusive rights an owner has. (2) The Register must also create regulations letting one registration cover a group of works by the same individual author, all first published as contributions to periodicals (including newspapers) within a twelve-month period, using a single deposit, application, and fee — but only if: (A) the deposit is one copy of the entire periodical issue, or entire newspaper section, in which each work first appeared; and (B) the application identifies each work separately, including which periodical it appeared in and its date of first publication. (3) Instead of filing separate renewal registrations under section 304(a), a single renewal registration may cover a group of works by the same individual author, all first published as contributions to periodicals, using one application and fee — but only if: (A) the same claimant or claimants, under the same basis, are renewing every work; (B) every work was copyrighted upon first publication, either through its own copyright notice and registration or through a general notice covering the whole periodical issue; (C) the renewal application and fee arrive between twenty-seven and twenty-eight years after December 31 of the year all the works were first published; and (D) the application identifies each work separately, including its periodical and date of first publication.

(d) Corrections and amplifications
The Register may set formal procedures, by regulation, for filing an application for "supplementary registration" — to correct an error in an existing copyright registration, or to add more information to it. This application must come with the section 708 fee and must clearly identify which registration it corrects or adds to. A supplementary registration adds to the information in the earlier registration; it does not replace it.

(e) Published edition of previously registered work
If a work was already registered while unpublished, its first published edition may also be registered — even if the published version is substantially the same as the unpublished one.

(f) Preregistration of works being prepared for commercial distribution
(1) Rulemaking. Within 180 days after this subsection's enactment, the Register of Copyrights had to issue regulations setting up procedures for "preregistering" a work that is being prepared for commercial distribution but has not yet been published. (2) Class of works. Those regulations only allow preregistration for works in a class that the Register determines has a history of being infringed before its authorized commercial release. (3) Application for registration. Within 3 months after a preregistered work is first published, the applicant must submit to the Copyright Office: (A) an application for registration of the work; (B) a deposit; and (C) the applicable fee. (4) Effect of untimely application. If a preregistered work is infringed no later than 2 months after its first publication, and the applicant fails to submit the items described in paragraph (3) in proper form by the earlier of — (A) 3 months after the work's first publication, or (B) 1 month after the copyright owner learns of the infringement — then any infringement lawsuit under this chapter for that work must be dismissed.