• DATES:
• ADDRESSES:
• FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
• SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
• I. Background
• II. Discussion
• List of Subjects in 37 CFR Part 201
• Proposed Regulations
• PART 201—GENERAL PROVISIONS
• Footnotes

Written comments are due on or before October 17, 2014.

All comments shall be submitted electronically. A comment submission page is posted on the Copyright Office Web site at http://copyright.gov/rulemaking/etitle-fees/. The Web site interface requires commenting parties to complete a form specifying their name and organization, as applicable, and to upload comments as an attachment via a browser button. To meet accessibility standards, commenting parties must upload comments in a single file not to exceed six megabytes (MB) in one of the following formats: A Portable Document File (PDF) format that contains searchable, accessible text (not an image); Microsoft Word; WordPerfect; Rich Text Format (RTF); or ASCII text file format (not a scanned document). The maximum file size is 6 megabytes. The form and face of the comments must include both the name of the submitter and organization. The Office will post the comments publicly on the Office’s Web site in the form that they are received, along with associated names and organizations. If electronic submission of comments is not feasible, please contact the Office at 202-707-8350 for special instructions.

Sarang V. Damle, Special Advisor to the General Counsel, by email at sdam@loc.gov or by telephone at 202-707-8350, or Abi Oyewole, Attorney-Advisor, by email at aoye@loc.gov or by telephone at 202-707-8350.

Over the past several years, the Copyright Office has sought public input on technological upgrades to the recordation function. See 78 FR 17722 (Mar. 22, 2013); 79 FR 2696 (Jan. 15, 2014). In addition to seeking written comments, the Office has held focused discussions with copyright owners, users of copyright records, technical experts, public interest organizations, lawyers, and professional and industry associations regarding the same. See 79 FR 6636 (Feb. 4, 2014). Participants in these processes have expressed a number of concerns about the current recordation system, including frustration with the submission process, the amount of time the Office requires to record remitted documents, and the searchability of the public record. These problems are related in part to the fact that recordation remains a paper-driven process (in contrast to most registration transactions, which occur electronically).
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To date, recordation specialists have had to review paper documents and manually transcribe selected information from the documents into an electronic format in order to permit indexing in the Office’s online Public Catalog. Among the information that must be transcribed are the titles of copyrighted works associated with a document submitted for recordation, which are typically presented in a list appended to the document, referred to informally as a “title appendix.” A title appendix associated with a document can include hundreds, or even thousands, of titles. The Office attributes the long processing times associated with document recordation in considerable part to the manual entry of these titles. In an effort to reduce processing time for recorded document submissions, on July 16, 2014, the Office proposed a new rule that would, among other things, allow remitters to submit electronic title appendices containing 100 or more titles in electronic format. See 79 FR 41470 (July 16, 2014).

The Recording Industry Association of America, Inc., (“RIAA”) commented on the proposed rule, stating, among other things, that the Office should “provide for a mechanism or procedure by which a remitter can easily correct any errors to the electronic title list that the remitter has supplied.”
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The Office agreed, and has adopted such a procedure as part of the final electronic title list rule, to be codified at 37 CFR 201.4(c)(4)(v). See the final rule entitled “Changes to Recordation Practices” published elsewhere in this issue of the Federal Register. Under the new § 201.4(c)(4)(v), if a remitter discovers that an error in an electronic title list has led to the inaccurate cataloging of a recorded document, it may submit a corrected title list to the Copyright Office in accordance with the procedures set forth in the rule. However, to avoid delay in implementing the electronic title list option, the Office decided to issue that final rule without imposition of a fee for corrections until such time as a fee is set in accordance with this separate notice.
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Section 708(a) of title 17 authorizes the Register to fix fees for services other than those enumerated in paragraphs (1)-(9) of section 708(a) based on cost and without prior submission to Congress.
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See 17 U.S.C. 708(a). Fees for Office services that the Register has the discretion to establish based on cost and without Congressional review include fees for copying Office records, fees for mail and delivery services, and fees for special handling. See 79 FR 15910, 15916-17 (Mar. 24, 2014). With the rule proposed herein, the Office seeks to adopt a new fee to recover costs associated with the correction of errors in the online Public Catalog following recordation of a document where the errors stem from a remitter’s inaccurate electronic title list.

Based on a cost analysis, the Office believes that the initial fee for this service should be established at seven dollars per corrected title. The Office arrived at the seven dollar amount by considering the various personnel and systems costs associated with providing the new service. To process a corrected title list, senior recordation staff must first review the nature and extent of corrections, and the Office’s accounting staff must process the payment associated with the submission. Then, the corrections must be individually transcribed into the Office’s online Public Catalog; this is a labor-intensive process that involves searching for the original entry by volume and document number, finding the title or titles that require correction, and amending and/or adding new titles to the database. Once entered into the online Public Catalog, the resulting changes must be checked to ensure the correction process was successful.

After evaluating the anticipated personnel and overhead expenses that will be incurred to accomplish the above tasks, the Office estimates the average cost to be seven dollars per corrected title. The Office therefore proposes to establish the new fee at that amount.

For the reasons set forth in the preamble, the Copyright Office proposes amending 37 CFR part 201 as follows:

[FR Doc. 2014-22232 Filed 9-16-14; 8:45 am]

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