Let us guide you along the process so you don’t miss a beat. You made the melody, now it’s time to copyright your music. Starting at $99 + filing fees.
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You made the melody, now it’s time to copyright your music.
Other services may claim to copyright your work, but make sure they are actually registering it with the U.S. Copyright Office.
If your work is not registered with the copyright office, you cannot file suit for copyright infringement.
In the music industry, registration of copyright is a prerequisite to get some people (like agents and record labels) to take you seriously.
If not timely filed, you cannot sue for statutory fines. With an official U.S. Copyright registration, you may be entitled to fines of up to $30,000 per infringed work or $150,000 if the infringement is willful. Without registration, you will have to prove and only be entitled to the actual harm you can demonstrate.
Registration also allows you to record the registration with the U.S. Customs Service for protection against the importation of infringing copies.
Registration makes it more difficult for infringers to argue that they were unaware of their infringement as it acts as a notice to everyone that you own the copyright.
+ Federal filing fees
of your federal copyright application including a review by the copyright team for accuracy, completeness and common mistakes.
Electronic filing of your application with the U.S Copyright Office with no need to wait for mail or dealing with paper files
that will be mailed to you directly from the U.S. Copyright Office.
+ Federal filing fees
Includes everything from the Basic Package PLUS:
A customer-specific form you can further customize if someone is infringing on your copyright.
Custom assignment template. If you need to sell or otherwise convey your copyright, you have access to your pre-filled in template that you can further customize.
of the preparation of your copyright application. Normal processing time is 5 business days in our Basic package.
Get your copyright registered in just 3 easy steps using our simple online questionnaire.
Complete our simple questionnaire to begin the registration process. Most people finish in as little as 7 minutes.
We create the official application for you and send it to you online for your review and approval.
When you upload or send us your work, we will file your copyright application with the U.S. Copyright Office.
At Trademark Engine, we can help you copyright your:
Still have questions? Call 1 (877) 721-4579 with us for real-time support.
Usually, determining whether something can be copyrighted is easy. Books, movies, and songs are copyrightable. Artistic drawings, paintings and photographs are also copyrightable. When you start moving towards more technical works and drawings, it can become a little trickier. Generally speaking, drawings, photographs, and other two-dimensional and three-dimensional expressions that visually depict three-dimensional objects are copyrightable. At the Trademark Engine, we can help you copyright your:
The law in the United States provides that you are granted a copyright in your work the minute you create it regardless of whether you register your work. Assuming your work is original and has a basic amount of creativity, you may claim ownership and protection. The problem is without registering, you have an incomplete form of protection in that you cannot enforce your rights in a court of law in America.
A trademark generally protects a word, phrase, symbol and/or design that distinguishes the source of the goods -- what we think of as brand name and brand recognition. A patent generally protects an invention, including the functionality or design, or in other words, “any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof.” 35 U.S.C. § 101. A patent typically gives the owner the exclusive right to manufacture products or employ processes covered by the patent for 20 years from the earliest priority date. A trademark, if properly maintained, can last forever. Copyrights, meanwhile, generally protect artistic works such as books, photographs, arts, movies and music.
While you do not have to register your work in order to receive copyright protection, registration will guarantee you several additional protections including:
There are a number of different categories (also known as an International Classes) that can be used to identify particular goods or services. The USPTO has developed a pre-determined list of trademark categories from which to choose. It may be helpful to register a mark within multiple classes (such as the name of company and the ability to sell t-shirts with the company name on it). Bear in mind that there is a USPTO filing fee for each selected category. Check out the Trademark Engine's User Manual to see broader descriptions of each available category.
Before picking a category, it may be helpful to decide if you are selling a good or a service. Goods are generally physical items like nuts, bolts, beer and t-shirts. Services generally focus on particular activities such as legal, consulting or accounting services. In some circumstances, it may be helpful to register under multiple classes.
The selection is important because a registered trademark generally protects only the category listed in the application. Broader categories may provide more protection, but if the category does not accurately fit the applied for good or service, the registration could be invalidated. Also, changing the class designation can be difficult and require an additional filing fee.
Bear in mind that a company name and particular product names may each be trademarked separately and may each involve different categories. Each registration would require the payment of additional fees to the USPTO and to the Trademark Engine.
Tips for Picking the Right category
In most cases, a copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years. If the author of the work died in 2070, then the copyright, in most situations, would last until 2140. For works made for hire, and for anonymous and pseudonymous works, the duration of copyright is 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation (whichever is shorter).
Thousands have protected their creative work by filing a copyright
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