Law Commons^™

Thieves In The Temple: The Scandal Of Copyright Registration And African- American Artists, Kevin J. Greene

Pepperdine Law Review

Copyright registration is the currency of copyright transactions in music, film, and television and is essential for pursuing infringement claims and ownership disputes. Despite copyright registration’s outsized reach across the copyright spectrum and importance to the copyright industries, the U.S. Copyright Office does not verify claims of copyright authorship or ownership. No express mechanism exists to challenge false copyright registrations in the Copyright Office, and the penalties for falsely claiming copyright authorship are paltry in comparison to the potential gains. This Article contends that lax copyright registration standards call into question the legitimacy of the registration system and that the …