A song is two separate filings, and Column 7 of each asks for the name, address and nationality of the author. It looks like the easiest field on the form. It is the one that generates queries.

There is no single definition

Section 2(d) of the Copyright Act does not define “author” once and apply it everywhere. It defines it separately for each class of work. Two of those clauses matter for a song:

  • for a musical work, the author is the composer;
  • for a sound recording, the author is the producer.

So the same song, filed twice, will often have different authors on each form. If the same name appears in Column 7 of both applications, it is worth a second look, though it is not automatically wrong: one person really can be both the composer of the work and the producer of the recording.

On the composition side, do not over-read the definitions. Section 2(p) removes the words from the musical work, which on a strict reading leaves the lyricist outside it, holding a separate literary work. Taken literally you would keep the lyricist off the musical work application altogether.

That is not what happens. On our own granted certificates, a song written by a composer and a separate lyricist came back with both named as authors, and the registered work described as consisting of lyrics and musical composition. So name everyone who wrote the song. The definitions explain the shape of the law; they are not an instruction to leave a writer off your register entry.

The recording side is the genuinely difficult one, because “producer” is a defined legal term that usually does not mean the person credited as producer on the release. That one has its own post.

Two consequences worth internalising

Everyone who qualifies goes in Column 7. If two people composed the music, both are authors of the musical work and both belong on the form, and both must sign the assignment. Leaving a co-author off is not tidying up; it is a gap in your chain of title that surfaces later, usually when there is money involved.

The remarks column must not contradict Column 7. If the boxes above name one party as author, the remarks cannot then describe someone else as “the author of this song”. Both end up on the public certificate, side by side, and an examiner reads them together. Generate them from one set of facts and they cannot disagree.

Author and owner are different questions

A point that resolves a lot of confusion: the register records authors and owners separately, in their own tables on the certificate. Authorship is a question of fact about who created the work; ownership is a question of what was assigned to whom.

So a filing that names an individual as author and a company as owner is not self-contradictory, that is the normal shape of a work that was created by a person and assigned to a label. What causes trouble is naming the wrong kind of party in the author column for the class of work you are filing.

If you have already filed it the other way

An earlier registration with the author column filled in differently is not void, and the register also records the owner, which is usually the fact that matters commercially.

Section 50 provides for rectification of the register if you need it. Whether that is worth doing depends on what turns on it, if ownership is undisputed and the owner is recorded correctly, the pragmatic answer is often to get it right going forward rather than reopen a closed file. If ownership is contested, take advice.

Next: the deed that carries it.