Quote - "As it stands, in the US, you need to register a work before you can sue."

My understanding is a little different.  You can sue in either case, it is what you can sue for that is different.

If it is registered, you can sue for damages.  If it is not registered, you can only sue to stop distribution/publication/sales of existing copies, but no monitary damages.

Again, complicated law, so I may be wrong on that one.

 

Bill

 

Well, theoretically you can sue (for actual loss of profits -- which would be very hard to prove) without registering, but the courts have ruled that before you can bring a lawsuit into federal court (and that's the only court that has jurisdiction), you must register your work.  It's a procedural requirement.

Now, you can register after you've noticed the infringement, but you must do so within 3 months of the first date of publication, or when the infringement occurred (or maybe when you noticed it -- I'm not sure).  Given that it often takes 6 months to complete an application unless you pay $600+ to fast track it (and apparently that may still be cutting it very close), it's almost as though you have no actual protection without registering.

I think that if you don't register before you notice infringement, you lose one of the other main benefits of registering, and that is that it provides prima facie evidence of your ownership of the copyright.

I'm imagining someone stealing someone's unregistered work and registering it under their own name and then suing the actual creator for infringement.  It would not surprise me to find that it had happened.

ETA: There is a reason I don't have a gallery here.  It could conceivably be considered "publication" and that makes registering a whole bunch of images all together a real PITA.  Once I've registered them, I'll feel okay about posting.

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