In Brief:  Musical works and sound recordings must be registered separately as distinct, copyrightable forms of expression.

An application to register tells the Copyright Office about you, your work and why you’re entitled to register a copyright. To further this goal, the Copyright Act requires that you include only accurate information in your copyright application. Gold Value International Textile d/b/a Fiesta Fabrics learned the consequences of not following this rule the hard way.

In my blog post of August 1, 2017, I posed the copyright litigation dilemma: “To File or Not to File”. On March 4, 2019, the US Supreme Court resolved the dilemma once and for all.