U.S. Copyright Office

Overview

The U.S. Copyright Office is the federal office that registers copyright claims, records information about copyright ownership, provides information to the public, and assists Congress and other parts of the government on copyright issues (U.S. Copyright Office). It sits inside the Library of Congress — part of the legislative branch — where it has operated since 1870 and as a recognized separate department since 1897 (U.S. Copyright Office). In May 2025 it became the center of a separation-of-powers fight when the White House tried to fire its head, Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter — a removal the courts have repeatedly blocked (Reuters).

The disputed appointment

Perlmutter was notified in May 2025 by a Trump administration official that she had been fired (Reuters). The White House email told her that “your position as the Register of Copyrights and Director at the U.S. Copyright Office is terminated effective immediately” (Associated Press (via SRN News)). The move came a day after her office circulated a report finding that some unauthorized uses of copyrighted works carried out by tech firms to train generative artificial intelligence systems may be unlawful — and her lawyers have said in legal papers that Trump sought to remove her because he disagreed with the report’s findings on AI (Reuters).

Later that month, Trump also fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden — the official who had appointed Perlmutter to the Register’s post in October 2020 — and moved to replace her with Todd Blanche, his former criminal defense attorney (Reuters, Associated Press (via SRN News)). Blanche, in his capacity as acting head of the Library of Congress, which oversees the Copyright Office, purported to ratify Trump’s decision to remove Perlmutter (Reuters).

Perlmutter sued to block the firing, arguing among other things that Trump lacked the authority to appoint Blanche as acting Librarian of Congress because that office is not an executive-branch agency but part of the legislative branch (Reuters). The appointment mechanics matter: the Register’s position is considered part of the legislative branch, the office is housed within the Library of Congress, and its director is chosen by the Librarian of Congress — who is also a legislative-branch employee, though nominated by the president and subject to Senate confirmation (Associated Press (via SRN News)).

The courts split before the appeals court weighed in. In July 2025, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, rejected Perlmutter’s request to preliminarily block her firing, finding she had not suffered “irreparable harm” that would justify reinstating her (Reuters). Then on September 10, 2025, a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit voted 2-1 to temporarily block the administration from firing her (Associated Press (via SRN News)). Circuit Judges Florence Pan and J. Michelle Childs concluded the purported firing was likely illegal, with Pan writing that “the Executive’s alleged blatant interference with the work of a Legislative Branch official, as she performs statutorily authorized duties to advise Congress, strikes us as a violation of the separation of powers” (Associated Press (via SRN News)). Pan added that the president’s purported removal of “the Legislative Branch’s chief advisor on copyright matters, based on the advice that she provided to Congress, is akin to the president trying to fire a federal judge’s law clerk” (Associated Press (via SRN News)). Judge Justin Walker dissented, writing that the register of copyrights “exercises executive power in a host of ways” (Associated Press (via SRN News)). The appeals court also said Blanche’s appointment as acting Librarian was likely unlawful because the position is subject to Senate confirmation (Associated Press (via SRN News)).

The administration took the fight to the Supreme Court, arguing that Blanche’s appointment was authorized by federal law and that the president’s Article II power permitted him to fire Perlmutter directly because her office is part of the executive branch (Reuters). In November 2025 the Court postponed a decision, waiting for its rulings in related removal-power cases (Reuters). On June 30, 2026, the justices declined to let Trump remove Perlmutter for now, denying the Justice Department’s request to lift the lower court’s block while her legal challenge proceeds — in an unsigned order the Court said was not a ruling on the merits (Reuters).

Foundations and functions

The office’s shape explains why the appointment fight matters. Before 1870, copyright registrations and copies of works were deposited at the author’s local federal district court — a piecemeal system in which some copies were never forwarded to the Capitol and those that were often suffered disorganized stewardship (U.S. Chamber of Commerce). In the wake of the Civil War, Librarian of Congress Ainsworth Spofford lobbied Congress to unify copyright registration in the Library — partly because he dreamed of transforming the Library into a national institution as part of Reconstruction, and partly because he grasped that the deposit copies authors sent to register their copyrights could be added to the Library’s collection (U.S. Chamber of Commerce). Congress went along, and in 1870 unified copyright registration in the Library of Congress (U.S. Chamber of Commerce).

The workload soon overwhelmed Spofford, so in 1897 Congress established the Register of Copyrights office as a separate department of the Library — the office as it is still known (U.S. Chamber of Commerce). The first Register was Thorvald Solberg, who quickly became a key advisor to Congress during its general revision of the Copyright Act in 1909; since then the Register and the office have conducted studies and reports and worked alongside Congress to keep the Copyright Act current (U.S. Chamber of Commerce).

Today the office’s staff of around 450 people, headed by the Register, examines hundreds of thousands of copyright claims per year, producing an average of over half a million registrations annually (U.S. Copyright Office). Those records are supplemented each year with thousands of documents representing hundreds of thousands of titles, providing additional ownership information (U.S. Copyright Office). The office acts as a conduit for the Library, supplying deposit copies for its collections, and administers statutory licensing provisions — managing and distributing royalties as the law requires (U.S. Copyright Office). The Register serves as the principal advisor to Congress on national and international copyright matters, testifying on request (U.S. Copyright Office), and Congress has delegated the office authority to develop regulations across copyright law, from music licensing to the Copyright Office’s own application and fee rules (U.S. Copyright Office).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not name Paul Perkins as acting Register — that appeared only as a snippet lead from a court-filing mirror and was not confirmed from a full-read source. It does not give the AI report’s exact title or its place in the office’s multi-part AI series. It states no outcome for the underlying lawsuit beyond the June 30, 2026 Supreme Court order, which the Court said was not a ruling on the merits. It does not resolve the constitutional question at the heart of the dispute — whether the Register exercises executive power, as the dissent and the administration argue, or is a legislative-branch official beyond the president’s removal power, as the D.C. Circuit majority held.