A reader question from Russ:

i wanted to know if there is a right time to copyright a screenplay. by that, i mean should you wait until you have what you believe is a final draft? or copyright the material after you have a polished first draft? and then, what if you copyright an early draft, but make changes, do you have to do the process all over again?

The usual caveat: I am not a lawyer, I don’t play one on TV, but I am kept up late every night pondering how the hell David Kelley has managed to come up with enough plot devices to sustain the over 500 1-hour TV episodes he’s been associated with for all his legal dramas (i.e., “L.A. Law,” “Ally McBeal,” “The Practice,” “Boston Public,” “Boston Legal”).

My advice: Why not just wait until you have a final draft, then copyright it? That saves you the time and money involved in multiple copyrights. If you plan on slipping an early draft to someone in the entertainment industry for an opinion and you’re worried about it getting ripped off, you can consider registering it through the WGA as that costs $20 (non-WGA members) vs. $40 for the copyright.

But if you really want to protect your script, opt for the copyright. Here’s an excerpt from an article by an actual lawyer Larry Zerner ESQ:

WGA REGISTRATION vs. COPYRIGHT REGISTRATION For screenwriters who use the latest version of Final Draft ® to help write their script, one nifty feature is the ability to register the screenplay with the WGA-West Intellectual Property Online Registry with the touch of a button. Many (if not most) screenwriters register all of their scripts with the WGA Registry, and, believing that they have done all that is necessary to protect their script, they neglect to register the script with the U.S. Copyright Office of the Library of Congress (http://www.copyright.gov).

Imagine their surprise when someone steals their screenplay and they learn for the first time that, other than establishing a date of creation, the WGA registration gives them almost no benefits at all. In fact, relying solely on the WGA registration can prove extremely costly for the following reasons.

First, although copyright protection exists at the moment of creation, registration with the Copyright Office is required before a lawsuit can be brought. Because it can take up to six months from the time the application is mailed to the Copyright Office until the application is processed and returned, if the writer needs to immediately file a lawsuit (i.e., in order to enjoin the movie’s distribution), he must apply for an expedited registration, for which the Copyright Office charges an additional $580.

Second, if the writer registers the script with the Copyright Office only after the infringement has taken place, he will be barred from recovering attorneys fees or statutory damages in the lawsuit.

Third, if the script is registered prior to or within five years of its publication, the registration acts as prima facie proof of ownership of the script in the event of a trial. There is no such benefit from the WGA registration.

If you copyright a final draft, then it turns out to be not such a ‘final’ draft, i.e., you work on it some more, unless you change the script in a huge way, my guess is that the initial copyright would still pertain to the revised draft. Perhaps, however, that’s the best use of the WGA registration option because you can at least provide an authorized date for subsequent drafts with the underlying material protected by the original copyright.

Wait a second. What if a writer registers a script with the WGA. A studio rips it off. The writer seeks out a lawyer to sue. The writer is crushed to learn that apparently without a copyright, there’s no legal grounds for a suit. But it turns out, the writer’s mother is dying of cancer. And they can’t afford the medical treatment. If only the writer could get the money she rightly deserves for her script, she could save their mother’s life. Incensed at the injustice of it all, the lawyer decides to take the case and go up against a battery of studio lawyers.

Sounds like a plot device for a TV episode! Quick! Get me David Kelley on the phone!