October 13, 2026
Your startup already owns the copyright in its code, website, content and designs the moment they are created, as long as the people who made them assigned their rights to the company. Registration with the US Copyright Office is optional but inexpensive, and it matters: you cannot sue for infringement of a US work until you register, and the strongest remedies are available only if you registered before the infringement started. Register your core code and key content once there is something worth copying.
Key takeaways
Probably, but check who created the work. Copyright protects original expression, such as source code, website copy, graphics, videos, courses and app interfaces, from the moment it is written down or saved. It does not protect ideas, algorithms, methods or functionality. A competitor can build software that does the same thing as yours, as long as it doesn’t copy your code.
The owner is the author, and the company is the author only for work its employees create within the scope of their jobs. Code or designs from founders before formation, contractors and agencies belong to the person who made them unless they signed a written assignment. This is the gap founders most often discover when they try to register or raise money. See Who Owns Startup IP?
Registration gives you three things you don’t otherwise have. First, the right to sue: since the Supreme Court’s 2019 decision in Fourth Estate v. Wall-Street.com, the owner of a US work cannot file an infringement suit until the Copyright Office has registered or refused the work. Second, stronger remedies: if you registered in time, you can ask for statutory damages (set by the court, without proving your actual losses) and your attorney’s fees. Without timely registration, you are limited to proving actual damages or the infringer’s profits, which is often hard and expensive. Third, evidence: a registration made within five years of publication is presumed valid in court, and it creates a public record of ownership.
Registration also helps when the problem isn’t a lawsuit. A registered copyright makes a demand letter more credible, and it supports takedown requests to platforms and app stores.
Example: A competitor copies large parts of your marketing site and onboarding flow. If you registered the site before the copying began, your demand letter can point to statutory damages and fees, and the competitor’s lawyer will take it seriously. If you didn’t, you first have to register, wait or pay for special handling, and then prove actual losses, so the competitor has much less reason to settle.
The timing rule is simple. To be eligible for statutory damages and attorney’s fees, register before the infringement starts, or within three months after the work is first published. Registering after you find a copy still lets you sue, but usually only for actual damages.
Our recommendation is to register your core codebase and key content once you have something a competitor would want to copy, and to register major new versions as they ship. You don’t need to register every release, blog post or minor update.
For most software companies, the useful registrations are the source code of your core product (as a computer program, which the Copyright Office treats as a literary work), with new registrations for major releases; your website copy and design; distinctive app screens and user interface elements; and marketing videos, courses, e-books and other content you sell or that drives your sales. Trademarks protect your name and logo, not copyright. See Trademark vs Copyright vs Patent.
You don’t have to hand over your whole codebase. The standard deposit for a computer program is the first 25 and last 25 pages of source code. If the code contains trade secrets, the Copyright Office allows deposits with the trade secret portions blocked out, or a smaller or partial deposit under its trade secret options. Deposits are available for public inspection, so use one of these options rather than sending code you want to keep confidential. See What Are Trade Secrets?
Registration is done online through the Copyright Office’s electronic system. You fill out an application, pay the fee and upload or mail a copy of the work (the “deposit”). The current fees are $45 for the Single Application, which covers one work by one author who is also the owner and is not a work made for hire, and $65 for the Standard Application, which most companies use. The Copyright Office has proposed raising these to $55 and $85, with the increase expected to take effect in late 2026, so check the current fee schedule before you file.
Processing often takes several months. If you need a registration quickly because you are about to sue, special handling costs extra (currently $800) and usually produces a decision within days.
Only the parts a human created. US copyright requires a human author. The Copyright Office will not register material generated by AI on its own, and in 2025 the D.C. Circuit agreed in Thaler v. Perlmutter; the Supreme Court declined to review the case in March 2026. Works that combine human and AI contributions can be registered for the human parts, such as the selection, arrangement or modification of AI output, or human-written code around AI-generated code. When you apply, you must disclose AI-generated material that is more than minimal and exclude it from the claim.
For founders, the practical point is that marketing copy, images or code generated by AI with little human input may not be protected by copyright at all. This is a new area of law that is likely to shift, so keep records of human contributions to anything important.
Most disputes end with a letter. A demand (or cease and desist) letter asks the infringer to stop and sometimes to pay. For copies on websites, platforms and app stores, a takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is usually the fastest route: the host removes the material to keep its own legal protection. For smaller claims, the Copyright Claims Board is a voluntary small-claims tribunal at the Copyright Office that handles cases up to $30,000 without the cost of federal court, though the other side can opt out. For larger or ongoing infringement, a federal lawsuit is the remedy, and registration is required first. See Copyright Infringement: Startup Risks.
For works by an individual, copyright lasts for the author’s life plus 70 years. For works made for hire, which includes most work employees create for a startup, it lasts 95 years from publication or 120 years from creation, whichever ends first. Either way, it will outlast any product you build.
For help deciding what to protect first, see My Startup Has Limited Resources. How Should I Prioritize Protecting IP? If you’d like help with registration or an infringement issue, contact us.
