DISSERTATIONS AND COPYRIGHT: TO REGISTER OR NOT TO REGISTER
You do not need to register with the Copyright Office in order to retain copyright in your work. Copyright is automatic once a work is in fixed form.
For some, however, there may be benefits to registering your work. You are required to have registered your work if you were to try to sue for infringement of copyright. Registration also allows you to sue for statuary damages (rather than just actual). However, this is often more of a concern to authors of creative or other original work.
Please note that neither the University of Miami nor the Graduate School requires students to formally register the dissertation with the U.S. Copyright Office. The decision to copyright belongs to the student.
When you deposit your dissertation with ProQuest, ProQuest will make an offer to register for the copyright of your work on your behalf; the amount charged by ProQuest for this service includes the U.S. Copyright Office filing fee plus a ProQuest handling fee. You can accept ProQuest’s offer to handle the copyright of your work, or you can not pay a handling fee and register for the copyright of your work yourself by directly contacting the U.S. Copyright Office: http://www.copyright.gov/eco/.
See the UM Libraries’ page on copyright here.
