Brown & Michaels

Budget Estimator for Copyrights

Many of our clients have asked for a way of estimating what costs and time periods to expect when registering a copyright. This estimator should serve as a guide, and is as good an estimate as we can prepare, but you should realize that the fees you will actually pay may vary widely from these, depending on the individual circumstances of your copyright. You can expect a copyright registration to be received in six months or less, if all goes well.

Most of our clients prefer to file copyright applications on their own, since the process is much simpler than patent or trademark. In most cases, this will not pose any problems.

In more complicated situations, or if you are not comfortable with the process, we will be happy to file the copyright registration application for you. Legal fees will vary based on the time expended, which will depend on the complexity of the task at hand, etc.

Initial Consultation: $100

Preparation and filing of application: allow 1 month, although we can usually prepare an application faster. Legal fees are $250 per application

Copyright office filing fee: currently $45 per work filed on paper, $35 for applications filed electronically.

Note: On April 1, 2009, the Copyright Office announced that fees for filing copyright applications will increase August 1, 2009. The new fees are as follows:

The fee for registration of a basic claim to copyright filed electronically will remain $35.
Filing on a Form CO, which is filled out online, printed with 2D barcodes that contain the information from the application, and mailed to the Office, will increase to $50.
Filing on traditional paper forms without barcodes will increase to $65.

Other Services are billed at up to $325 per hour, plus expenses, on a time spent basis. We can help you with license agreements, non-disclosure agreements, incorporations, etc.
Trademark Fees and Patent Fees are on separate fee schedules. The current U.S. Patent and Trademark Office official Patent and Trademark fees are also separately listed.

Billing and Fee Policies

All fees are due when billed.
We accept VISA and MasterCard. If paying by credit card, please provide the card number, expiration date, account name and billing address, and an authorization to charge your card for a specific amount.
We can accept payment by wire transfer - e-mail for details. If you are paying by wire transfer from outside the USA, please add $25.00 to the transfer to cover the incoming bank fees. Also, please be sure to include your name and the matter number and/or statement number in the "comments" on the wire transfer, so that we can correctly apply the payment. .
Amounts unpaid after 30 days will be charged a service charge at the rate of 1.5% per month.
Returned checks are subject to a $20 fee, plus any applicable bank fees.
All government fees must be paid by the client when due - we cannot advance fees for clients.
The charges listed on this page do not include direct out-of-pocket costs incurred on behalf of clients. Clients are responsible for out-of-pocket expenses, such as postage or Express costs, bank fees, telephone fees, copying, draftsman's or foreign agent's fees, etc., in addition to the fees listed above, unless a fee inclusive of such expenses has been agreed to in advance. Expenses are billed at cost - we do not mark up third party bills.
Fees are subject to change without notice.

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Brown & Michaels, PC
400 M & T Bank Building
118 North Tioga Street - The Commons
Ithaca, NY 14850
Phone: (607) 256-2000 · Fax: (607) 256-3628
e-mail: bpm@bpmlegal.com