How to copyright a screenplay

You own it from the first page

A screenplay is protected by copyright as soon as it exists in a fixed form, typed into a file or written in a notebook. Nobody has to approve it and there is no fee. The US Copyright Office dates protection from the moment a work is created and fixed, and the UK government's guidance says copyright comes automatically, without an application.

Europe and most of the rest of the world work the same way. The Berne Convention, which nearly every country has joined, forbids its members to make protection depend on registration or any other formality, so a script written in Manchester is protected in Madrid and Los Angeles as well.

When writers talk about copyrighting a script, then, they mean making a record that proves what they wrote and when. If a dispute ever comes, you will lean on that record. In the United States, registration also decides if you can go to court at all, and what a court can award you.

What copyright covers in a script

Copyright protects the way you have told a story: the scenes as you wrote them, the dialogue, the action lines, the particular order and shape in which things happen. It does not reach the idea underneath. The Copyright Office's basic guide lists ideas and concepts among the things copyright leaves alone, along with titles, names and short phrases, and the rule is broadly the same in the UK and the rest of Europe.

Take Low Tide, the sample project in Scriptopus. Its premise, a sound recordist going back to her late mother's house on the day it is sold and finding her estranged father there, belongs to nobody. Anyone may write a film about a daughter, a father and a house full of a dead woman's things, and many people have. What the writer of Low Tide owns is everything built on that premise: the cassette tapes, the walk out onto the flats at low tide, the water filling Des's footprints as he leaves, and the lines the two of them say to each other.

So two scripts with the same premise can turn up in the same season without anyone having stolen anything. Film titles repeat for a similar reason: copyright gives nobody a title.

Registering with the US Copyright Office

The Copyright Office registers screenplays, scripts and treatments as works of the performing arts. Registration is voluntary, and what it changes is set out in the Office's circular Copyright Basics.

• The right to sue. For a US work, the Office must have registered the claim, or refused it, before you can file an infringement suit. An unpublished script counts as a US work when all of its authors are US nationals or live in the United States.
• Statutory damages and legal fees. A court can award these only if the registration took effect before the infringement began. (Published works have three months' grace after publication, which rarely matters for a script.) Without a timely registration you can still recover your actual losses and the infringer's profits, but you have to prove them, and you usually pay your own lawyer.
• A presumption in court. Registration made before publication, or within five years after it, is prima facie evidence that the copyright is valid and that the facts on the certificate are true.

You apply online at copyright.gov, or on paper, with three things: the application, the fee, and a copy of the script as the deposit. The fee isn't refunded and the copy isn't returned. The date that counts is the day the Office has all three in acceptable form, however long the certificate takes to arrive, so there is no need to wait for it before the script goes out.

Those are the amounts on the Office's fee page on 22 October 2026. In July 2026 the Office sent Congress a new schedule meant to start in the autumn, which would raise the Single Application to $55 and the Standard Application to $85, so check the page before you file. Private services that offer to "copyright your script" file the same application for you and charge more for it.

Most writers register when a draft is about to leave their hands, before the first contest entry or the first query. A registration covers the draft you deposited, so when a rewrite adds a great deal of new material, writers often register again as that draft starts going out. Few bother for a polish of a few pages.

The WGA West Registry

The Writers Guild of America West runs a registry that new writers often hear about before they hear of the Copyright Office, though it does a different job. Registering there gives you a dated record of your claim to have written the material, and the Registry can produce what you deposited as evidence if legal action begins. Its home page says it does not take the place of registering with the US Copyright Office, and its registration terms say it gives no statutory protection.

Its registration page, read on 22 October 2026, sets these terms.

• Fee: $20 for the general public, $10 for WGA members in good standing. Writers outside the US are billed in their own currency.
• Term: five years, renewable for another five at the fee then in force. Renewals are taken from three months before the expiry date until three months after it.
• What it takes: scripts, treatments, synopses, outlines and written ideas for film, television and radio, and many other kinds of writing.
• How: online only. Paper submissions are no longer accepted.

You don't need to be a Guild member to use it, as the home page says. Some writers register early material there, such as a treatment or a series document, and take the finished script to the Copyright Office. A dated record of an idea shows when you had it, though the idea itself stays outside copyright.

In the UK

The UK has no official register of copyright works, and nothing to file. The government's guidance says protection is automatic and costs nothing, and for written and dramatic work it lasts until 70 years after the author's death. British writers rely instead on records that would show the date if it ever mattered.

• Every draft, with its date. A cloud folder that keeps version history, emails sending a draft to a reader, a contest's confirmation of your entry: each is a record, kept by someone else, of what existed and when.
• A copy lodged with a solicitor. A solicitor (or, less often now, a bank) can hold a sealed copy and record the date it arrived. It costs money, but the date is one you didn't set yourself.
• The American options. The WGA West Registry takes work from writers anywhere, and writers who send scripts to US companies sometimes register with the US Copyright Office as well.

Elsewhere in Europe

In the EU, as in the UK, a script is protected without registration. Some countries also run a voluntary register or a deposit service, which puts the author and the date on an official record.

Spain is one. Its Registro de la Propiedad Intelectual is run by the Ministry of Culture, whose page says registration is voluntary, that the author's rights do not depend on it, and that the Registry's certificates serve as evidence of what it recorded. Other countries have their own arrangements, run by a public office or an authors' society, and the national copyright office or the writers' organisation where you live can tell you what exists and what it costs.

Posting a copy to yourself

The "poor man's copyright" is the old habit of sealing a script in an envelope, posting it to yourself and leaving it unopened, so that the postmark dates what is inside. The US Copyright Office says copyright law makes no provision for it and that it is no substitute for registration.

It also proves less than people hope. An envelope can be posted unsealed, or empty, and filled later, and anyone disputing your claim will say so. A sent email with the script attached, a cloud folder with its version history, or a $20 registration with the WGA West gives a firmer date for less effort.

Release forms

Production companies, agencies and some contests ask writers to sign a submission release before they will read an unsolicited script. The wording varies, but most releases cover the same ground. They say the company receives a great many submissions and may already be developing something similar, and that reading your script creates no obligation to you. Many add that any claim goes to arbitration, or limit what you could recover.

Signing one is routine. A company that won't read without a release is protecting itself from the coincidences described above, which it runs into all the time. Read the form anyway and keep a dated copy with your records. If it asks you to give up rights in the script itself, or has terms you don't follow, show it to a lawyer before you sign. Contest rules deserve the same reading, as our guide to choosing contests explains.

If you think someone copied you

Seeing your premise in someone else's film announcement is a horrible feeling, and it is usually a coincidence. A shared idea isn't infringement, and nor are the stock scenes a genre runs on, such as the crew assembling for the heist or the detective gathering the suspects. A claim needs your particular expression, meaning specific scenes, sequences or lines, to turn up in their work, and usually some way they could have seen your script.

1. Gather your record. The dated drafts, any registrations, and the trail of who received the script and when: queries, contest entries, signed releases, notes from meetings.
2. Write down what is similar. Set the passages side by side, with page numbers. Leave out the premise and the genre furniture, which any lawyer will set aside first.
3. Keep it off social media. A public accusation can expose you to a defamation claim, and it won't strengthen your case.
4. Talk to a lawyer before you contact anyone. An intellectual property or entertainment lawyer can tell you if there is a case, and in which country. Legal claims have time limits, so ask sooner rather than later. In the US, a US work has to be registered before a suit can be filed. In the UK, the Intellectual Property Office gives general guidance on copyright law and points people to an IP professional for advice on a particular case.

No notice needed on the title page

A line such as © 2026 Maya Ellis on the title page adds nothing to your protection. In the US a copyright notice is optional for any unpublished work, and for everything published since 1 March 1989. The UK government's guidance says you may mark your work with the symbol, your name and the year, and that doing so makes no difference to the protection. The same goes for a WGA registration number.

Readers in the business tend to see these lines as the sign of a newcomer, and a few take them as a hint that they are suspected in advance. Our title page guide lists them with the other things to leave off.

In ScriptopusNone of the six designs under Edit cover page has a line for a copyright notice or a registration number. Industry Standard, the first, centres the title and the credit and puts your contact details at the bottom left.

Questions

Sources and further reading

1. US Copyright Office, Circular 1: Copyright Basics (PDF, revised September 2021).
2. US Copyright Office, Copyright in General, including the "poor man's copyright".
3. US Copyright Office, Performing Arts, which lists screenplays, scripts and treatments.
4. US Copyright Office, Fees, read on 22 October 2026, and its notice of a proposed fee schedule (14 July 2026).
5. Writers Guild of America West, WGAW Registry and its registration details, read on 22 October 2026.
6. GOV.UK, How copyright protects your work, including how long copyright lasts and stopping people using your work.
7. Spanish Ministry of Culture, Finalidad del Registro de la Propiedad Intelectual (in Spanish), on what registration in Spain does.