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Ins and Outs of Group Registration Of Photographs

By Bruce Bellingham and Peter McCall

An important part of a professional photographer's life, and that of a photographer's attorney, is protecting the intellectual property produced by that photographer. A photographer may take thousands of photos over just a few days as part of covering an emerging news story, such as doing a magazine cover's photo shoot. Many photographers properly compile photographs from unrelated sources and register the photographs in an effort to protect their property rights in the images. Group registration of those images has enabled a much more efficient registration process, but does registration provide the statutory damage protections one might assume should be available?

The Copyright Act of 1976 permits the register of copyrights to issue rules for registering multiple works. Group registrations of photographs were permitted starting in August 2001, by rules set forth at 37 C.F.R. '202.3(b)(10). Previously, the U.S. Copyright Office had noted when it suggested the rules that “few photographers have registered their works” due to cost and administrative burden. Registering each one was impractical, to the point of being impossible, for photographers who took hundreds of images in a short period of time. Because registration is usually required to bring an infringement action under 17 U.S.C. '411(a), and pre-infringement registration is necessary for an award of statutory damages, photographers complained that they had a right but not an effective infringement remedy.

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