Copyright registration in India: the discrepancy letter nobody warns you about
Form XIV is easy to file and easy to file wrong. The five discrepancies the Copyright Office raises most, and how to answer each in a page.
Copyright registration in India is voluntary, cheap, and almost entirely done online. That is why it is given to the newest person in the office. It is also why so many applications stall at the same place: the discrepancy letter, which arrives weeks after filing and gives you thirty days to fix something you did not know was wrong.
Here are the five discrepancies we see most, and the reply to each.
How the application actually moves
File Form XIV with the Statement of Particulars, the Statement of Further Particulars, the work itself, and the fee. The application then waits out a mandatory thirty-day period during which anyone can object. If nobody does, it goes to an examiner. The examiner either accepts it, or issues a discrepancy letter listing what is missing or inconsistent. You reply within thirty days. If the reply satisfies the examiner, the work is registered and the extract of the Register of Copyrights follows. If it does not, there is a hearing.
The discrepancy letter is not a rejection. It is a list. Treat it as one.
The five usual discrepancies
1. The applicant is not the author, and there is no document explaining why. The most common one. A company applies for copyright in a logo drawn by a freelance designer, or in software written by employees. The Office wants a no-objection certificate from the author, or an assignment deed, or in the employee case a statement that the work was made in the course of employment under a contract of service. Fix: file the NOC or assignment, signed by the author, with the author's details matching column 7 of the Statement of Particulars exactly.
2. The artistic work is used as a label, and there is no search certificate. If the artistic work is used or capable of being used in relation to goods or services, the proviso to Section 45(1) requires a certificate from the Registrar of Trade Marks that no identical or deceptively similar mark is registered or applied for. Many applicants do not know this until the letter arrives. Fix: apply on TM-C, wait for the certificate, file it. If the deadline is tight, file the TM-C acknowledgment with a request to keep the application pending.
3. The year and country of first publication do not match the work. The Statement says the work was published in 2022; the work carries a 2021 copyright notice. Or the Statement says "unpublished" and the work is plainly on sale. Fix: a short letter correcting the particulars, with the supporting fact. Do not argue; correct.
4. The work filed does not match the class claimed. A mobile app's screens filed as an "artistic work" when the applicant wants to protect the code; a brochure filed as "literary" when the value is in the layout. Fix: explain what is being claimed and, if necessary, file a fresh application in the right class. Software is a literary work; file the source code extract (the first and last pages are the common practice) and the screen captures separately if both matter.
5. Power of attorney missing or unstamped. If an agent filed, the Office wants a properly executed and stamped power of attorney on record. Fix: file it. This one should never happen, and it happens constantly.
The reply
One page, plus enclosures. Reference the diary number and the discrepancy letter date. Take each discrepancy in the order the letter lists them, state the correction or enclose the document, and close with a request to proceed to registration. If the Office has misread the application, say so politely and point to the exact field. Do not re-argue the merits of registration; the examiner has not questioned them.
File within thirty days of the letter. If you cannot, write before the deadline explaining why and asking for time. Silence is treated as abandonment.
A note on what registration gets you
Registration is not a condition for copyright to subsist, and the extract of the Register is only prima facie evidence of the particulars entered in it. Clients sometimes expect more. The honest line is that registration is cheap evidence of a date and an owner, and that it is worth having before any dispute, not after.
The Copyright and Design Registration course includes a Form XIV exercise for a mobile app, a real discrepancy letter, and the reply that cleared it.