Copyright Samples

Along with your form and the appropriate fee, you are required to file a copy ("sample" or "deposit") of the copyrighted work with the Copyright Office. Generally, if the work is published, two copies of the "best edition" are required. The nature of the sample depends upon the nature of the work. The following information is drawn from Copyright Office publications 7b and 40a.

Note that in all cases the deposit should show how the copyright notice is applied to the work. That is, if you are filing the first and last 25 pages of a computer program, be sure the copyright notice appears on one of the pages. Similarly, a photograph of a sculpture should show the notice printed on the base, etc.

 

The Library of Congress may request a copy in machine-readable form, in which case the following preferences apply:

  • With documents and other accompanying material rather than without;
  • Not copy-protected rather than copy-protected (if copy-protected then with a back up copy of the disk(s));
  • Format:

    PC-DOS or MS-DOS (or other IBM compatible formats, such as XENIX): (i) Optical media, such as CD-ROM-best edition should adhere to prevailing NISO standards; (ii) 5 1/4" Diskette(s); (iii) 3 1/2" Diskette(s); 

    Apple Macintosh: (i)Optical media such as CD-ROM-best edition should adhere to prevailing NISO standards; (ii)  3 1/2" Diskette(s);

For the most up-to-date information on copyright samples, see the Copyright Office's publication 7b


Last updated: Tue, 16 Feb 2021