The U.S. Copyright Office in the Library of Congress is amending its fees for copyright services. Some fees will remain the same or decrease. Other fees — mostly for services requiring manual labor — will rise.The new fees are scheduled to take effect on Aug. 1, 2009.
The proposed fee for filing a copyright application online, using the new electronic Copyright Office known as eCO, remains $35.
The proposed new fee for using fill-in Form CO is $50, an increase of $5. The new fee for paper applications is $65, an increase of $20. These fees reflect the Copyright Office’s desire to “discourage use of the traditional paper forms, which are the most costly to provide and process, by imposing a fee that reflects this greater cost.”
The Copyright Office is proposing that corresponding fees stay the same or be reduced for services for which costs have remained constant or dropped since fees were last adjusted in July 2006. For services where costs have gone up—specifically those requiring manual work by staff—the Copyright Office is proposing fee increases to offset rising costs. In addition to registrations filed on paper applications, services affected include document recordation and record searches.
For a complete list of adjusted fees, go to www.copyright.gov/docs/fees.html.
Under copyright law, fee adjustments proposed by the Register of Copyrights can be implemented 120 days after a new schedule is submitted to Congress unless Congress enacts a law beforehand stating that it does not approve the new fees.
