To register copyright for an app, file an application through the U.S. Copyright Office’s Electronic Copyright Office (eCO) system, pay a fee of $45 or $65, and upload a portion of your source code as the deposit copy.1U.S. Copyright Office. Register Your Work: Registration Portal Straightforward online applications that don’t trigger examiner questions currently average about 1.9 months to process, and the effective date of your registration is the day the Office receives your complete submission, not the day the certificate arrives.2U.S. Copyright Office. Registration Processing Times
Register Before You Need To
Your code is copyrighted the moment you save it, but that automatic protection is limited. You cannot file a federal infringement lawsuit over a U.S. work until it is registered.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 U.S. Code 411 – Registration and Civil Infringement Actions If someone copies your app and you haven’t registered, you’ll be waiting on the Copyright Office before you can even walk into court.
Timing changes what you can recover. Register within three months of first publishing your app, or before any infringement begins, and you can pursue statutory damages and attorney’s fees. Miss that window and you’re limited to actual financial losses, which for a new or small app can be close to zero.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 412 – Registration as Prerequisite to Certain Remedies for Infringement Statutory damages run from $750 to $30,000 per work at the court’s discretion, and climb to $150,000 if the infringement was willful.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 504 – Remedies for Infringement: Damages and Profits Courts can also award reasonable attorney’s fees to the prevailing party, which often decides whether a lawsuit is worth filing at all.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 U.S. Code 505 – Remedies for Infringement: Costs and Attorneys Fees
The practical rule: register as soon as you publish. If you’ve already published without registering, do it now. You can still recover for past infringement once registered, but statutory damages and attorney’s fees for infringement that happened before registration are off the table unless you were inside that three-month window.
What to Gather Before You Start
Pull everything together before opening the application. The system lets you save and return, but the process moves faster when you’re not hunting for information mid-form.
Application Details
You’ll need the full legal name and contact information of the copyright claimant, the app’s title, and the date the work was completed. If the app has already been published, add the date of first publication. Computer programs register under the “Literary Work” category the Copyright Office uses for code.7U.S. Copyright Office. Help: Type of Work Describe what you’re claiming; for most apps, that’s “computer program.” If you’re also registering original text, artwork, or audio bundled inside the app, list those separately.
Only the copyright owner, an owner of one or more exclusive rights, or their authorized agent can file.8U.S. Copyright Office. Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices – Chapter 400 – Who May File an Application If an employee wrote the app as part of their regular duties, the employer is treated as the legal author and files as the claimant, no separate agreement needed.9U.S. Copyright Office. Circular 30 – Works Made for Hire If a freelance developer built the app, ownership does not automatically transfer to the person who paid for it; a standalone app doesn’t fit the narrow categories where “work for hire” applies to contractors, so you’ll need a written copyright assignment before you can register as the owner.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 101 – Definitions Co-developers are joint owners of a single copyright and any of them can file.11Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 U.S. Code 201 – Ownership of Copyright
The Deposit Copy
This is where app registration differs from registering a book or a photograph. You submit a portion of your source code, not the compiled app. The standard deposit is the first 25 and last 25 pages of source code. If the entire program is 50 pages or fewer, submit all of it.12U.S. Copyright Office. Code of Federal Regulations 37 CFR 202.20 For code that doesn’t paginate cleanly, the Office treats roughly 40 lines as one page, so 1,000 lines from the beginning and 1,000 from the end works as an equivalent.13U.S. Copyright Office. Help: Deposit Copy
Protecting Trade Secrets in the Deposit
Handing proprietary code to a federal agency makes many developers uneasy. The Copyright Office allows several alternatives when the code contains trade secret material:14U.S. Copyright Office. Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices – Chapter 1500 – Deposits
- Reduced unredacted deposit: the first and last 10 pages of source code with nothing blocked out.
- Redacted standard deposit: the first and last 25 pages with trade-secret portions blocked out, provided the blacked-out material is proportionately less than what remains visible.
- Hybrid deposit: the first and last 25 pages of object code plus at least 10 consecutive pages of unredacted source code.
- Short program redacted: for programs under 50 pages, submit all of it with trade-secret portions blocked out under the same proportionality rule.
If none of these options works, you can request special relief from the deposit requirements.
Third-Party and Open Source Code
You cannot claim copyright in code you didn’t write. When your source contains preexisting material owned by someone else, complete the “Limitation of Claim” field so the registration covers only the new, original code you contributed.15U.S. Copyright Office. Circular 61 – Copyright Registration of Computer Programs Skipping this step can create problems if you ever need to enforce the registration in court.
Filing Through eCO
The Electronic Copyright Office (eCO) system handles registrations in a fixed order: complete the application, pay the fee, then upload the deposit. The system won’t let you upload files until payment clears.16U.S. Copyright Office. Online Registration Help (eCO FAQs)
Filing Fees
The fee depends on your situation:
- $45 if you are the sole author and claimant, the work is a single work, and it was not made for hire.
- $65 for all other basic electronic claims, including work-for-hire registrations, multiple authors, or cases where the claimant is different from the author.
Most apps built by companies or development teams fall into the $65 category.17U.S. Copyright Office. Fees Payment options include credit or debit card, ACH bank transfer, or a Copyright Office deposit account. If you need faster processing, special handling costs an additional $800 and can shorten the wait to a week or two.
Processing Times and the Effective Date
As of mid-2025, online applications with digital uploads that don’t require correspondence with the examiner average about 1.9 months. Applications that do trigger correspondence average 3.7 months.2U.S. Copyright Office. Registration Processing Times Those numbers shift, so check the Copyright Office site for current estimates.
One detail catches people off guard: the effective date of your registration is the day the Office receives your complete application, deposit, and fee, not the day it finishes reviewing them and mails your certificate.18U.S. Copyright Office. Chapter 4: Copyright Notice, Deposit, and Registration That matters for the three-month-after-publication deadline. File promptly and the effective date locks in even if the certificate is months out.
Registering Updates and New Versions
Each version of your app that contains meaningful new original code is treated as a separate work. A separate application, fee, and deposit are required for each version you want to register.15U.S. Copyright Office. Circular 61 – Copyright Registration of Computer Programs A registration for version 2.0 covers only the new material added in that version, not the code carried over from version 1.0.
Minor bug fixes or changes forced by hardware requirements don’t add enough new authorship to justify a separate registration. A substantial feature update, a rewritten module, or a significant redesign of the app’s creative elements will. There’s no bright-line rule for how much is enough; the standard is whether the new material is sufficiently original and different from the prior version to stand on its own as copyrightable work.