More confusion from another lawyer:

Nothing is black & white in the law. AND entertainment law and intellectual property law are not the same thing.

Here are the appropriate comments from the copyright office. Read them and decide for yourself if there is a greenlight to split a copyright among publishers. I don’t think so.

“You may register unpublished works as a collection on one application with one title for the entire collection if certain conditions are met. It is not necessary to list the individual titles in your collection. Published works may only be registered as a collection if they were actually first published as a collection and if other requirements have been met. See Circular 1, Copyright Basics, section “Registration Procedures.”

“Unpublished Collections
Under the following conditions, a work may be registered
in unpublished form as a “collection,” with one application
form and one fee:
• The elements of the collection are assembled in an
orderly form;
• The combined elements bear a single title identifying the
collection as a whole;
• The copyright claimant in all the elements and in the collection
as a whole is the same; and
• All the elements are by the same author, or, if they are by
different authors, at least one of the authors has contributed
copyrightable authorship to each element….
An unpublished collection is not indexed under the
individual titles of the contents but under the title of the
collection.”

The issue is going from the unpublished state to the published state. Can you split the folio? Maybe, but you may have to re-register the individual tracks(s) under their published titles

John smile


Stop analyzing; just compose the damn thing!
http://johnlarenceschick.com/home
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