The Copyright Office Should Adopt Alternative Fee Structures to Improve Registration Efficiency and Access
Yesterday, the Copyright Alliance submitted comments to the U.S. Copyright Office in response to its Notice of Inquiry (NOI) requesting input on potential alternative fee structures that could be implemented into the updated electronic registration system. Copyright registration, while technically voluntary, is in practice essential for any creator who wants to take full advantage of the rights granted to them under the copyright law. A registration system that is too expensive or administratively burdensome effectively shuts out many creators from exercising their own legal rights. Thus, any new proposals for make the registration system less expensive and less burdensome to creators warrants significant consideration by the Office.
In sum, we recommended the Office adopt four fee structures (two that were raised in the NOI and two that were not):
- Small Entity Fees: Reduced fees for qualifying creators and small organizations based primarily on income or gross revenue;
- Subscription Fees: fixed periodic fees allowing high-volume applicants to file a set number of applications within a given timeframe;
- Registration Fees for a Single Unit of Publication in Digital Form: enabling multimedia digital works to be registered within one application and one fee, just as physical bundled works already can be; and
- Graduated Group Registration Fees: a tiered fee model where the number of works in a group application is not arbitrarily limited by the application fee and the per-work cost decreases as the number of works in a group application increases, along with increased examination efficiencies.
Guiding Principles
Before diving into specifics, we outlined several foundational principles that should guide the Copyright Office’s approach to any alternative fee structure that might be considered by the Office:
Applicants are not a monolithic group. Some (copyright registration) applicants may care most about the ease of registration process, while other may prioritize shorter pendency. The Office ought to tailor fee structures to the needs of certain categories of applicants without inadvertently burdening other applicants that fall outside those categories.
Fee increases are not inevitable. No one wants a fee increase, but we all realize that sometimes a fee increase is inevitable and necessary. We do not think that time is now. We pushed back firmly against language in the NOI suggesting that higher filing volumes would require either increased fees or additional appropriations from Congress. Modernization of the Enterprise Copyright System (ECS), automation of repetitive administrative tasks, use of ethically developed AI tools, and smarter examination workflows can all reduce costs. A Copyright Alliance survey found that 40% of recent filers would reduce or stop registrations entirely in response to any fee increase. It is therefore essential for the Office to pursue these different cost-reduction approaches aggressively before turning to fee increases since any fee increase might reduce registration filings, which is the exact opposite result the Office, the creative community, and the public want here.
Don’t eliminate existing options prematurely. The current menu of registration options serves a wide range of applicants. None should be discontinued until the ECS is fully operational and any new fee structures are in place so that the Office and applicants have time to evaluate the impact of the ECS and any alternative fee structures.
Alternative fee structures must not delay ECS launch. The new ECS registration system is already taking much too long to roll out. While it’s essential that the new ECS registration system be built with the technical flexibility, including robust API capabilities, to support alternative fee structures from the start, any consideration of new fee structures must not slow down deployment of ECS.
Fee Structures That Don’t Make the Cut
The Copyright Alliance expressed skepticism of two Copyright Office fee proposals:
Fees differentiated by type of work: The Office suggested charging different fee amounts based on what kind of work is being registered, citing examination cost differences identified in a Federal Research Division (FRD) report. We opposed this approach, arguing that the Office has not adequately explained why it costs more to examine certain types of works, and that the FRD report’s cost calculations appear to include expenses unrelated to registration examination. Beyond the methodology concerns, we also explained that fees based on work type would not reflect an applicant’s ability to pay and could suppress registrations for certain creative fields, which would result in a lopsided public copyright record.
Differential fees for individuals versus organizations: The Office proposed varying fees based on whether the applicant is an individual or an organization. We opposed this framing as overly blunt, explaining that a solo photographer with limited monetary resources and a billionaire filing individually would be treated identically. The small entity fee, tied to actual income or revenue, is a far more accurate and equitable tool for addressing financial need.
Fee Structures the Copyright Alliance Supports
The Copyright Alliance supported the two other alternative fee proposals suggested by the Copyright Office in its NOI. On the small entity fee structure, we recommended that eligibility be evaluated based on the copyright claimant’s income or revenue and that the process for demonstrating eligibility be simple and minimally burdensome. We suggested that the Office look at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s small and micro-entity fee programs as useful models, while noting important differences between the patent and copyright systems that make the copyright version likely to have an even larger positive impact.
On subscription fees, we explained that we envision a calendar-year-based model with tiered pricing calibrated to the number of works or applications filed. APIs will be essential to making subscriptions work in practice—enabling bulk filings, reducing redundant data entry, and making registration genuinely efficient for high-volume creators.
The Copyright Alliance also proposed the Office adopt two additional fee structures not included in the NOI: the digital single unit of publication fee and the graduated group registration model—both of which we believe would meaningfully reduce redundancies and improve efficiency for creators working at scale. We explained in our comments that allowing multimedia digital works to be registered within one application and one fee, just as physical bundled works already can be, is intuitive and can be done immediately, and that a tiered subscription fee model would be a godsend to high-volume filers, especially when coupled with API access.
A Call for Public Dialogue
At the end of our comments, we called for the Copyright Office to convene roundtables or listening sessions on registration system improvements. Rulemaking comments alone are insufficient to capture the complexity of these issues. Broader stakeholder dialogue, involving applicants across disciplines, high- and low-volume filers, sophisticated and novice applicants alike, will be essential to designing a system that actually works for everyone.
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