CO Seeks Comment on Reducing Fee for Designating Agents to Receive Infringement Notifications

The Copyright Office sought comment Wednesday on an NPRM that would significantly reduce the fee for online service providers to designate agents to receive notifications of claimed infringement under Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 512. The CO is seeking to lower the fee to $6 per designation in anticipation of a switch from using paper forms to designate those agents to an online filing system. The designation fee framework currently includes an initial $105 fee and an additional $35 fee for each of up to 10 alternate designated agents. “The office does not believe that an additional fee to include alternate names with a designation to be warranted, as the office does not currently foresee appreciable additional costs” via the online process, the CO said in a notice in the Federal Register. “This significantly lower proposed fee reflects the far greater efficiency” of the CO's online filing system. The CO said it anticipates it will receive about 7,000 designation filings each year at an estimated annual processing cost of about $41,000. Comments on the fee proposal are due June 24.