In some forms of copyright laws, only a copyright registration makes a creative work eligible for protection. Copyright symbol. ...

While this is not necessary under the 1886 Berne Convention, there are still benefits to officially registering a work. Most importantly, it establishes a public record of the copyright claim. The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, sometimes called the Berne Union or Berne Convention, adopted at Berne in 1986, first established the recognition of copyrights between sovereign nations. ...

In the United States, the United States Copyright Office accepts registrations. For works created in the U.S., a registration is required before an infringement suit may be filed in court. The United States Copyright Office, a part of the Library of Congress, is the official U.S. government body that maintains records of copyright registration in the United States. ...