On January 17, 2018, the United States Copyright Office issued a final rule simplifying the deposit requirements for certain literary works and musical compositions. Specifically, during copyright registration, an applicant had to submit two copies of the best edition of the printed format of the creative work, one to satisfy the registration requirement and the other to satisfy the mandatory deposit requirement. Now, both requirements can be satisfied by submitting just one copy of the best edition. This requirement applies to literary monographs. The Copyright Office reserves the right to require an additional deposit copy should the Library of Congress require its deposit during the registration process.
Deposit rules also were clarified for musical compositions where if published in both print and phonorecord formats, only the print version will be required to be submitted. If the phonorecord is the published version, then in that case, the phonorecord copy will be the required copy for submission.