Can You Copyright Computer Code and How to Register It

You can copyright computer code, and in fact you already do: under federal law, code is protected automatically the moment it is written or saved, because computer programs are treated as “literary works.”¹ Learning how to copyright computer code is really learning how to register it, because registration with the U.S. Copyright Office is what lets you sue an infringer and collect the damages that make a lawsuit worth filing.²

Why Registration Is Worth the Trouble

You cannot file an infringement lawsuit on a U.S. work until the Copyright Office has either registered your copyright or refused the application.³ The Supreme Court settled in 2019 that merely submitting an application does not open the courthouse door; the Office has to act first.⁴

Timing decides what you can recover. Register before the infringement starts, or within three months of first publishing the code, and you can pursue statutory damages and attorney fees. Miss that window and you are stuck proving actual financial losses, which in software cases is expensive and often speculative.²

Statutory damages run from $750 to $30,000 per infringed work, and a court can go as high as $150,000 per work when the infringement was willful.⁵ Waiting until someone copies your code and then hurrying to register is exactly the wrong order.

Sort Out Ownership Before You File

The application asks who the author is and who the copyright claimant is. Get this wrong and the registration will not do what you want it to do.

Employees

When an employee writes code as part of their job, the employer owns the copyright automatically under the “work made for hire” rule. No written contract is needed for that ownership to attach; the employer is treated as the legal author from the moment the code exists.⁶

Independent Contractors

A freelance developer owns the copyright to code they write, even if a business commissioned the work and paid in full. Computer programs are not on the narrow list of categories that a written agreement can convert into a work made for hire on its own. If a company wants the rights, the contract needs a written assignment clause where the contractor explicitly transfers copyright. Without that clause, the contractor keeps them.

Open-Source Components

If your codebase pulls in third-party open-source libraries, their license terms may restrict how you license and distribute your own code. Copyleft licenses like the GPL require any derivative work incorporating GPL-licensed code to be released under the GPL, which can be incompatible with proprietary distribution. Permissive licenses such as MIT, BSD, and Apache generally allow commercial use with fewer conditions. Audit every dependency before you register or choose a license, and confirm the terms line up with your distribution plans.

What You Are Actually Protecting

Registration covers both the human-readable source code and the compiled object code. Translating your code into another programming language, or building a close adaptation, can also count as infringement.¹ Protection reaches “non-literal” elements as well: the unique way a program’s components are organized and interact, which courts sometimes call its structure, sequence, and organization. Copyrightable screen displays and other audiovisual output are covered too.

Copyright does not cover the underlying algorithms, mathematical formulas, logical processes, or overall functionality of a program. Another developer can study what your software does and build a competing product that performs the same function, so long as they write their own original code.¹

Whether application programming interfaces are copyrightable is still unsettled. In 2021 the Supreme Court held 6–2 that Google’s use of Oracle’s Java API declarations in Android was fair use, but the Court deliberately declined to decide whether API declarations are copyrightable at all, assuming for argument’s sake that they were.⁷ Reimplementing an API to let programmers reuse familiar skills on a new platform sits on reasonably solid ground for now, but the underlying question could still shift.

How to Register Your Code

Registration happens through the Copyright Office’s Electronic Copyright Office (eCO) system at copyright.gov. Three steps: complete the application, pay the fee, and upload a deposit copy of your source code.⁸

The Application

Create an eCO account and start a new registration, classifying the program as a literary work. The form asks for the program’s title, who wrote it, when the code was completed, whether it has been published, and the name of the copyright claimant, which is often the employer when the code is a work made for hire.⁹

The Deposit

You do not submit the entire program. For code with no trade secrets, provide the first 25 pages and last 25 pages of source code. If the program is 50 pages or fewer, submit the whole thing and note that to the Office. The deposit must be visually readable, such as a PDF.¹⁰

Fees and Processing Time

The simplest electronic registration (one author, one work, not a work for hire) costs $45. Standard applications cost $65.¹¹ The Copyright Office has proposed raising the standard electronic fee to $85, which could take effect later in 2026.¹² Fees are nonrefundable whether registration is granted or not.

Straightforward electronic applications that generate no follow-up questions from the Office average about one to two months. Applications that require correspondence can take several months longer.¹³

Expedited Registration

If you need registration fast because of pending litigation, a customs matter, or another urgent situation, ask for “special handling.” The Office aims to process these within five working days but does not guarantee that.¹⁴ The current surcharge is $800, with a proposed increase to $1,100 in 2026.¹²

Keeping Trade Secrets Out of the Public Record

Depositing source code creates a tension. The deposit becomes part of a public record, and you may want to keep proprietary algorithms confidential. When the code contains trade secrets, notify the Office in writing and pick one of these deposit formats:¹⁰

The first and last 10 pages of source code, unredacted.
The first and last 25 pages with trade-secret portions blacked out, as long as the redactions cover less than half the deposit.
The first and last 25 pages of object code, together with at least 10 consecutive pages of unredacted source code.
For programs of 50 pages or fewer, the entire program with trade-secret material blocked out, again limited to less than half.

Registering Updates and New Versions

Each version of a program with new copyrightable material is a separate work and needs its own registration, filing fee, and deposit. That registration covers only the changes, revisions, and additions in the new version, not the preexisting code carried over.¹⁰

Not every update qualifies. Minor bug fixes and changes driven purely by hardware compatibility do not contain enough original expression to support a fresh registration. The new material has to be creative and different enough from the earlier version to stand on its own. If your program is unpublished, group registration for unpublished works may let you cover several versions at once.

Code That Includes AI-Generated Content

Using an AI tool during development does not disqualify your code from copyright, but it does change the registration. Copyright only reaches the portions a human created. Content produced entirely by an AI in response to a prompt, where the AI made the expressive choices, is not protectable and must be excluded from the claim.¹⁵

Use the Standard Application, not the simplified single-work form. In the “Author Created” field, describe the specific human authorship. Under “Limitation of the Claim,” in “Material Excluded,” briefly describe the AI-generated content you are disclaiming. Do not list the AI tool or its parent company as an author.¹⁶

Where a developer takes AI suggestions as a starting point and substantially rewrites, reorganizes, or integrates the output with original code, the human-authored portions remain copyrightable. What matters is how much creative control the human exercised over the final expression, not whether an AI tool was involved somewhere along the way.

Protection Outside the United States

A U.S. registration protects your code domestically. The Berne Convention extends the underlying copyright across more than 180 member countries: member nations must recognize copyrighted works from citizens of other members without requiring local registration. The United States joined in 1989, so code written by U.S. authors receives automatic protection in every other member country.¹⁷ Enforcement mechanisms and remedies vary from country to country, but the baseline protection travels with the work.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 102 – Subject Matter of Copyright In General
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 412 – Registration as Prerequisite to Certain Remedies for Infringement
3
GovInfo. 17 USC 411 – Registration and Civil Infringement Actions
4
Supreme Court of the United States. Fourth Estate Public Benefit Corp. v. Wall-Street.com, LLC
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 504 – Remedies for Infringement Damages and Profits
6
Cornell Law School. Work Made for Hire
7
Supreme Court of the United States. Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc.
8
U.S. Copyright Office. Online Registration Help (eCO FAQs)
9
U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright Registration Circular 2
10
U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright Registration of Computer Programs Circular 61
11
U.S. Copyright Office. Fees
12
Federal Register. Copyright Office Fees
13
U.S. Copyright Office. Registration Processing Times
14
U.S. Copyright Office. Circular 10 Special Handling
15
U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright Registration Guidance Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence
16
Federal Register. Copyright Registration Guidance Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence
17
Legal Information Institute (LII) / Cornell Law School. Berne Convention