U.S. Copyright Office Joins Message on International Women’s Day 2022; U.S. Copyright Office, Issue No. 948, March 8, 2022

U.S. Copyright Office, Issue No. 948 ; U.S. Copyright Office Joins Message on International Women’s Day 2022

"The U.S. Copyright Office has joined with national and regional intellectual property offices from around the world as well as with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to issue a message in support of women creators and innovators. This year’s theme for International Women’s Day is “Gender Equality for a Sustainable Tomorrow.”"

Yoga Pose Copyright Bid Too Big of a Stretch, Regulator Says; BusinessWeek, 12/12/11

Ellen Rosen, BusinessWeek; Yoga Pose Copyright Bid Too Big of a Stretch, Regulator Says:

"Yoga poses such as head-to-knee stretches and the sequences of the moves are “exercises” rather than “choreography” and can’t be copyrighted in the U.S., regulators said.

The U.S. Copyright Office previously permitted yoga poses and their sequences to be registered, even if those exercises were in the public domain, Laura Lee Fischer, acting chief of the office’s Performing Arts Division, said in response to an inquiry by an attorney involved in lawsuits the founder of Bikram Yoga filed against three yoga studios.

The office reviewed the legislative history of the copyright law and decided that exercises, including yoga, “do not constitute the subject matter that Congress intended to protect as choreography,” Fischer said in an e-mail."

Copyright Office Proposes Rule Change Exempting Works Only Available Online from Mandatory Deposit; Law Librarian Blog, 7/22/09

Law Librarian Blog; Copyright Office Proposes Rule Change Exempting Works Only Available Online from Mandatory Deposit:

"The Copyright Office of the Library of Congress is proposing to amend its regulations governing mandatory deposit of electronic works published in the United States and available only online. The amendments would establish that such works are exempt from mandatory deposit until a demand for deposit of copies of such works is issued by the Copyright Office. From the notice of proposed rulemaking, 74 Fed. Reg. 34286 (July 15, 2009):

This notice proposes that the current section 202.19(c)(5) exemption be amended so that all electronic works published in the United States and available only online enjoy a qualified exemption from mandatory deposit, which would mean that any work in this class is exempt until the Copyright Office issues a demand for its deposit. This revised exemption would apply to all published electronic works available only online. It would apply to serials, monographs, sound recordings, automated databases, and all other categories of electronic works. Furthermore, because the revised exemption would apply exclusively to published online-only works, there will be no need to retain the current list of machine-readable works in physical formats to which the exemption does not apply. It is important to emphasize, however, that the revised exemption would not apply to those works published in both physical and online formats. These works, because they are not published ``only''online, were never exempted from mandatory deposit."

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/2009/07/copyright-office-proposes-rule-change-exempting-works-only-available-online-from-mandatory-deposit.html

The Importance of Orphan Works Legislation - U.S. Copyright Office, 9/25/08

The Importance of Orphan Works Legislation:
By Marybeth Peters, Register of Copyrights:
"Legislation is pending in Congress that would ease the “orphan works” problem....Based on the recommendation of my office, as published in our 2006 Report on Orphan Works, the legislation would allow good-faith users of copyrighted content to move forward in cases where they wish to license a use but cannot locate the copyright owner after a diligent search...The problem is pervasive. Our study recounts the challenges that publishers, film makers, museums, libraries, universities, and private citizens, among others, have had in managing risk and liability when a copyright owner cannot be identified or located..."
http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/