ACT Praises CO's Online DMCA Agent Designation System

ACT|The App Association praised the Copyright Office Tuesday for its deployment this month of its online system for designating and searching for agents to receive copyright infringement claim notifications under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's Section 512. Online service providers that have previously designated agents with the CO will have until the end of 2017 to submit a new designation electronically via the online system (see 1610310050). "App developers will finally have the ability to protect their intellectual property with the click of a button instead of the lick of (thousands of) stamps," said ACT Senior Policy Counsel Brian Scarpelli in a blog post. The old designation system "resulted in an online searchable database that was not user-friendly (for example, many fields were not searchable), often contained outdated or erroneous information, and made it difficult for copyright owners to send take-down requests to protect their work." ACT members "can now know they will be able to submit DMCA take-down notices more easily and accurately through accessing this new [CO] database," Scarpelli said.