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Registering a Script

J

JonAdamProductions

I am finishing up the draft to my first movie screenplay. I want to get it registered ASAP (this week) and have a few questions about doing so. I was going to submit it online at www.copyright.gov; it is only $35 and is copyrighted from the minute they receive the submission.
While looking around, I found a Script Registration page on the Writers Guild of America (East).
https://www.wgaeast.org/index.php?id=238
To register it there would be $17 (I am a student).
Does this wind up at the US copyright office or is it just a submission to WGAE and if there is a copyright issue, then they deal with it? Any advice would be most helpful.

Thank you
Jon
 
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Registering with the Writers Guild has nothing at all to do with registering the copyright.
The Guild does not deal with copyright issues. My advice would be to register the copyright
with the US copyright office and not bother with the WGA registration.
 
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From the WGA:

http://www.wga.org/subpage_register.aspx?id=1189

What happens if I don’t renew my registration?

Registration is valid for a five-year period. Once you submit material for registration, you authorize the Guild to destroy the manuscript without notice to you upon expiration of five years from the effective date. Material that is not renewed is destroyed and purged from our possession. Once material is destroyed, the Registry will not be able to submit your work as evidence to any Guild-related or legal proceedings.


filmy

I always do both... Register an actual copyright AND register with the WGA. It has saved my ass twice because I had both.
 
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Mr. Jones - using the word "work" - gave the impression the work was destroyed.

At the expiration date the digital copy of your script in the database is "destroyed".

Saying the work is destroyed was unclear.
 
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FilmJumper said:
From the WGA:

http://www.wga.org/subpage_register.aspx?id=1189

What happens if I don’t renew my registration?

Registration is valid for a five-year period. Once you submit material for registration, you authorize the Guild to destroy the manuscript without notice to you upon expiration of five years from the effective date. Material that is not renewed is destroyed and purged from our possession. Once material is destroyed, the Registry will not be able to submit your work as evidence to any Guild-related or legal proceedings.


filmy

I always do both... Register an actual copyright AND register with the WGA. It has saved my ass twice because I had both.
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As far as I know, you only need a U.S. Copyright registration. The WGA registration legally does nothing for you at all, and affords you no real protection. It's the same as me showing up and saying, "Dude, he totally wrote that. He sent it to me, I saw it!" Which, of course, means absolutely nothing.

How did the WGA help you in whatever situation it was? (just curious!)
 
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thefilmgeek said:
As far as I know, you only need a U.S. Copyright registration. The WGA registration legally does nothing for you at all, and affords you no real protection. It's the same as me showing up and saying, "Dude, he totally wrote that. He sent it to me, I saw it!" Which, of course, means absolutely nothing.

How did the WGA help you in whatever situation it was? (just curious!)
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Well a copyright is very similar, it's not a trademark, it's just a filing date with a copy of your work. If someone makes your movie or sues you over yours, you'll still need lawyers, money, proof, etc.
 
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Exactly...

indietalk said:
Well a copyright is very similar, it's not a trademark, it's just a filing date with a copy of your work. If someone makes your movie or sues you over yours, you'll still need lawyers, money, proof, etc.
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And that's exactly why I do both and am even investigating a few other options... Why? Because the better paper trail you have on your work, the easier it's going to be should you actually end up in court.

I would say that in the very beginning if you're not really selling anything and struggling more to improve your writing, then a U.S. Copyright is probably all you really need but later on in the game if you're making some bucks, it never hurts to be prudent when it comes to being able to PROVE you are the originator of your work.

filmy
 
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Exactly. A good way to go about it is to remember you already own the copyright to your work (all that means is nobody has the right to copy your work), and now you need to make sure you can prove that, which comes from registering with LOC, WGA, and even that friend that shows up in court TFG mentioned can help. The more proof the better, but if you are strapped, go about it in an order that makes sense. Like FilmJumper says, probably LOC first.
 
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The WGA registration legally does nothing for you at all, and affords you no real protection.
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Nonsense! It's VERY STRONG physical evidence that you registered intellectual property on a certain date. The WGA is a respected organization that doesn't tamper with evidence. Of course a file on a hard drive is evidence too, with file properties that display date created, last modified, and last opened. If someone challenges whether you created the work or not then they would need to provide evidence that predates your evidence. The #1 best evidence that you can have is registration with the US Copyright Office, and they never destroy your submission (!). As previously mentioned it would suck if you forgot to Re-register after 5 years and the WGA destroyed your papers. It also sucks that you have to keep on paying to re-register every 5 years. That's why you DON'T save $$ with the WGA. The WGA is NOT the way to go.

If all you have to demonstrate that you created a work is people's testimony then you are screwed. Judges don't care about he said, she said because they know that people lie. I recently had an actor trying to extort money out of me. He was falsely claiming that he had "major involvement" in creating my script, ,which I knew was nonsense. He came across as very ignorant because all he had for evidence was his buddy's testimony.
 
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Thank you for your answers. I am going to be registering it with the US Copyright office. I should have specified in the 1st post, this is a script that I will be shooting in a year or so. We are in pre-production now and I am registering it so that I can increase the number of people working on it with less worries about someone taking my ideas and what we are doing. it is less a concern about the people I am with and more so it accidentally making it into someone elses hands due to there being more copies of it available; such as someone losing a thumb/jump drive. We are planning a recorded reading of the script so that we have a better idea of pacing as well as having the audio to work with to cut together a rough animation of the storyboards we are starting in a few months.
 
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Another super cheap idea is to send it to yourself in an envelope through the USPS. When it comes obviously don't open it and you will have dated proof of when it was written. If you ever get into a bind later you can bring it to court and present this to the judge as evidence.
 
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Weaponx said:
Another super cheap idea is to send it to yourself in an envelope through the USPS. When it comes obviously don't open it and you will have dated proof of when it was written. If you ever get into a bind later you can bring it to court and present this to the judge as evidence.
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The poor man's copyright is a misnomer, that's the only suggestion here that is actually worthless. Think about it. You could send yourself 100 sheets of blank paper in an unsealed envelope, and when you feel like it, type them up and seal it.
 
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Any original work that you have personally created is automatically protected by copyright laws. There are ways of proving dates down the line if someone tries to infringe on your copyrighted creation or intellectual property. Take a copy of the finished manuscript to a "Notary Public" and sign and date each page in their presence, and have them put their official notary seal and signature on the front page. My copyright lawyer told me this is one way of proving dates of creation. When I worked in an R&D lab we kept notebooks and did all of our work and kept all notes in the book. We signed and dated every page, everyday that we wrote in it. That is for protection of intellectual property as well.
 
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Alter Ego Productions said:
Any original work that you have personally created is automatically protected by copyright laws. There are ways of proving dates down the line if someone tries to infringe on your copyrighted creation or intellectual property. Take a copy of the finished manuscript to a "Notary Public" and sign and date each page in their presence, and have them put their official notary seal and signature on the front page. My copyright lawyer told me this is one way of proving dates of creation. When I worked in an R&D lab we kept notebooks and did all of our work and kept all notes in the book. We signed and dated every page, everyday that we wrote in it. That is for protection of intellectual property as well.
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This is not good advice. First of all a notary charges every time they use the seal. Can you afford a 120 page script? Secondly, you could have a notary notarize blank signed pages, and type them up later, since they are in your possession. The correct way to register your copyright is with the LOC. They hold a copy of your screenplay. As stated, WGA would be the second option. Why go against the norm when there is no point to?
 
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I beg to differ... This is correct and solid advice, and it is another legal method to prove dates of creation for anything. I got it right from my lawyer and paid to do so. You do not need every page notorized. The cover sheet/table of contents would provide for how many pages there are etc, and each page is signed and the notary is your legal witness. They can not notorize blank pages. Unless you know a crooked one... I am not and did not tell him to not register with LOC. This is something that can help in the interim, not instead of.... It simply was another legal option to offer some sort of protection from day one. People use this method while working on an idea, with the intention of patenting their finished idea. It's done in the business world and R&D environments all the time.
 
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I thought you said instead of LOC, but yeah, this could be one of the many supplemental solutions.
 
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The more evidence the better.
I forgot to mention that emails are physical evidence that can be used in court. Emails pretty much cannot be altered. Perhaps you want to email yourself as you come up with script ideas. So send yourself an email to an alias account (example: Yahoo) as soon as you write a new idea. Then do not delete your "sent" mail folder or your yahoo email that you sent yourself.

Of course you need to use a program like Mozilla Thunderbird, Outlook Express or Netscape and then back up your email files. I'm not sure about Outlook but here's where the others reside on your computer.
Documents & Settings > [your user file?] > Application Data > Thunderbird
Documents & Settings > [your user file?] > Application Data > Mozilla

Keep in mind that you won't be able to see the "application data" folder unless you disable its hidden status: Tools > Folder Options > View tab > Show hidden files and folders
 
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