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URANTIA FOUNDATION, a non-profit
foundation,                                                  No. 95-17093
Plaintiff-Appellant,
                                                             D.C. No.
v.                                                           CV-91-00325-SMM

KRISTEN MAAHERRA,                                            OPINION
Defendant-Appellee.

Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Arizona
Warren K. Urbom, Senior District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted
January 14, 1997--San Francisco, California

Filed June 10, 1997

Before: Donald P. Lay,* Alfred T. Goodwin, and
Mary M. Schroeder, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Schroeder

_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________

COUNSEL

Gordon Dean Booth, Jr., Booth, Owens & Jospin, Atlanta,
Georgia, and Robert S. Venning, Heller, Ehrman, White &
McAuliffe, San Francisco, California, for the plaintiff-
appellant.

Joseph D. Lewis, Cleary & Komen, Washington, D.C., for the
defendant-appellee.

_________________________________________________________________
OPINION

SCHROEDER, Circuit Judge:

This is a copyright dispute between parties who believe the
copyrighted work, the Urantia Book, was authored by celes-
tial beings and transcribed, compiled and collected by mere
mortals. In this litigation, the plaintiff-appellant Urantia Foun-
dation claims that the defendant-appellee Kristen Maaherra
infringed the Foundation's copyright when she distributed a
computerized version of the Book on disk. Maaherra con-
cedes copying, so the only issue before us is whether the
Foundation owns a valid copyright in the Book.

The district court granted summary judgment to Maaherra
on the ground that the Foundation's renewal copyright was
invalid. Urantia Foundation v. Maaherra, 895 F. Supp. 1347
(D. Ariz. 1995).1 The court determined that the Foundation
was not a proper renewal claimant because the Book was not
a "work made for hire," as claimed on the renewal certificate,
and that even though the Book could have qualified as a
"composite work," the Foundation had failed to show that it
was its "proprietor." See 17 U.S.C.S 304(a) (providing that
proprietors of composite works and works made for hire can
claim renewal). We conclude that the Foundation has estab-
lished that it was, at the time of renewal, the proprietor of a
composite work, and that the mistaken description on the
renewal certificate does not affect the validity of the renewal.
We therefore reverse the district court's grant of summary
judgment in favor of Maaherra.
BACKGROUND

Central to an understanding of the case is the history, as
perceived by both parties, of the creation of the Book. Both
parties believe that the words in the Book were "authored" by
non-human spiritual beings described in terms such as the
Divine Counselor, the Chief of the Corps of Superuniverse
Personalities, and the Chief of the Archangels of Nebadon.
These spiritual entities are thought to have delivered the
teachings, that were eventually assembled in the Book,
"through" a patient of a Chicago psychiatrist, Dr. Sadler.

The parties also agree that to understand these divine mes-
sages better and to share them with the rest of the world, Dr.
Sadler formed a group of five or six followers, called the Con-
tact Commission. At first, the members of the Contact Com-
mission started discussing the divine teachings among
themselves. Then, apparently in response to what they per-
ceived to be prompting from the spiritual beings, and in col-
laboration with a larger group of followers called the Forum,
the Contact Commission began to pose specific questions to
the spiritual beings. The answers to these questions, as trans-
mitted to the humans and arranged by them, became the Uran-
tia Papers. At some point, the manuscript containing the
Papers was intentionally destroyed after the creation of about
2,000 printing plates.

Members of the Contact Commission, including founding
member Dr. Sadler, then formed the Urantia Foundation, an
Illinois charitable trust, for one purpose: to preserve and dis-
seminate the teachings contained in the Papers. It appears that
the Foundation was, at least initially, headquartered at Dr.
Sadler's home. The Contact Commission transferred the print-
ing plates to the Foundation through the trust instrument.

The transfer is detailed in a district court opinion, arising
in another circuit, and also involving the validity of the Foun-
dation's copyright in the Book, but analyzing the validity of
the original, rather than the renewal copyright. Urantia Foun-
dation v. Burton, 210 U.S.P.Q. 217 (W.D. Mich. 1980). The
Burton court found that the trust instrument described the
Foundation's primary estate as consisting of the printing
plates on which the Papers were inscribed. The instrument
also provided that the trustees were specifically empowered,
and had the duty, "to retain absolute and unconditional control
of all plates and other media for the printing and reproduction
of the Urantia Book and any translation thereof. . .." Id. at
219 (citing to Paragraph 3.3 of the trust instrument).

The Foundation published the Book in 1955. The original
copyright certificate was issued to the Foundation in 1956.
The Foundation renewed the copyright in 1983.

In 1990, Maaherra, who resides in Arizona, and who
describes herself as "an avid reader of the [Book] since
1969," prepared a study aid that included the entire text of the
Book and started distributing it free of charge to various indi-
viduals. That same year, the Foundation learned that someone
was distributing the Book on computer disks, using the Foun-
dation's trademarks. Upon discovering that Maaherra was
responsible for this, the Foundation filed the instant suit in
1991. See Urantia Foundation v. Maaherra, 895 F. Supp.
1338 (D. Ariz. 1995) (recounting this chronology).

This appeal is from the district court's October 25, 1995
amended final judgment based on its February 10, 1995 order
granting summary judgment to Maaherra on the Foundation's
copyright infringement claim. See Urantia, 895 F. Supp.
1347.

DISCUSSION

Copyrightability of the Book

A threshold issue in this case is whether the work, because
it is claimed to embody the words of celestial beings rather
than human beings, is copyrightable at all. "To qualify for
copyright protection, a work must be original to the author."
Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Company,
Inc., 
499 U.S. 340, 345
  (1991)(citation omitted). The core
statute, 17 U.S.C. S 102(a), provides:

       [c]opyright protection subsists . . . in original works
       of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of
       expression, . . . from which they can be perceived,
       reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either
       directly or with the aid of a machine or device.

17 U.S.C. S 102(a). "Original, as the term is used in copy-
right, means only that the work was independently created by
the author (as opposed to copied from other works), and that
it possesses at least some minimal degree of creativity." Feist,
499 U.S. at 345
 (citation omitted).

[1] Maaherra claims that there can be no valid copyright in
the Book because it lacks the requisite ingredient of human
creativity, and that therefore the Book is not a "work of
authorship" within the meaning of the Copyright Act. The
copyright laws, of course, do not expressly require "human"
authorship, and considerable controversy has arisen in recent
years over the copyrightability of computer-generated works.
See Arthur R. Miller, Copyright Protection for Computer Pro-
grams, Databases, and Computer-Generated Works: Is Any-
thing New Since CONTU?, 106 Harv. L. Rev. 977 (1993). We
agree with Maaherra, however, that it is not creations of
divine beings that the copyright laws were intended to protect,
and that in this case some element of human creativity must
have occurred in order for the Book to be copyrightable. At
the very least, for a worldly entity to be guilty of infringing
a copyright, that entity must have copied something created
by another worldly entity.

The district court held that the Book was copyrightable.
However, if the court erred in this regard, we need not reach
the other issues in the case.

[2] The copyrightability issue is not a metaphysical one
requiring the courts to determine whether or not the Book had
celestial origins. In this case, the belief both parties may have
regarding those origins, and their claim that the Book is a
product of divine revelation, is a matter of faith, and obvi-
ously a crucial element in the promotion and dissemination of
the Book. For copyright purposes, however, a work is copy-
rightable if copyrightability is claimed by the first human
beings who compiled, selected, coordinated, and arranged the
Urantia teachings, "in such a way that the resulting work as
a whole constitutes an original work of authorship. " 17 U.S.C.
S 101 (defining a "compilation"). See also 17 U.S.C. S 103
(providing that compilations are copyrightable). Those who
were responsible for the creation of the tangible literary form
that could be read by others, could have claimed copyright for
themselves as "authors," because they were responsible for
the revelations appearing " `in such a way' as to render the
work as a whole original." Feist, 
499 U.S. at 358
 (referring
to the statutory definition of compilation).

The Supreme Court in Feist, supra, held that the white
pages of the plaintiff's telephone directory did not qualify for
copyright protection, because there was nothing original about
listing names of the area's telephone subscribers in alphabeti-
cal order. Yet Feist also recognized that a compilation of facts
may possess the requisite originality when the author chooses
which facts to include, in what order to place them, and how
to arrange the data so that readers may use them effectively.
Feist simply reaffirmed what the statute provides and what
had been known since The Trademark Cases, 
100 U.S. 82

(1879) and Burrow-Giles Lithographic Co. v. Sarony, 111
U.S. 53 (1884): that copyright protection only extends to
those components of the work that are "original " to the
"author", and not to the facts themselves. Feist, 499 U.S. at
346-47, 350-51.

[3] In this case, the Contact Commission may have
received some guidance from celestial beings when the Com-
mission posed the questions, but the members of the Contact
Commission chose and formulated the specific questions
asked. These questions materially contributed to the structure
of the Papers, to the arrangement of the revelations in each
Paper, and to the organization and order in which the Papers
followed one another. We hold that the human selection and
arrangement of the revelations in this case could not have
been so "mechanical or routine as to require no creativity
whatsoever." Feist, 499 at 362. We conclude, therefore, that
the "extremely low" threshold level of creativity required for
copyright protection has been met in this case. See Feist, 499
U.S. at 345. ("The vast majority of works make the grade
quite easily, as they possess some creative spark,`no matter
how crude, humble, or obvious' it might be.") (quotation
omitted).

[4] It must be remembered that the claim of copyright
infringement in this case concerns the verbatim copying of the
entire Urantia Book, including the selection and arrangement
of the revelations into the Papers that comprise the Book. This
case does not concern the use of a single "revelation" outside
the context of the Book, which for purposes of this case
would be analogous to a "fact," and which of course would
not be copyrightable. See Feist, 
499 U.S. at 347
.

This principle, the distinction between revelations as facts
and the expression of these revelations, was recognized in a
1941 copyright infringement case that involved similar claims
of divine authorship. Oliver v. Saint Germain Foundation, 41
F. Supp. 296 (S.D. Cal. 1941). In Oliver, as here, the plain-
tiff's religious text proclaimed that the facts contained in the
text had come straight from a spirit, and that the spirit was the
author of the history in the text. Id. at 297. In that case, how-
ever, the plaintiff (unsuccessfully) claimed copyright protec-
tion in the divine revelations themselves, and in the methods
of spiritual communication, rather than in the plaintiff's spe-
cific selection or arrangement of these divine revelations. The
defendant in Oliver had not copied that arrangement and
selection, but simply had written another text using the same
divine "facts." Id. at 299. The court in Oliver made it clear
that, had the claim been that the selection and arrangement of
the divine revelations had been infringed, the plaintiff's copy-
right infringement claim might have had merit. Id. 

[5] Thus, notwithstanding the Urantia Book's claimed non-
human origin, the Papers in the form in which they were orig-
inally organized and compiled by the members of the Contact
Commission were at least partially the product of human cre-
ativity. The Papers thus did not belong to that "narrow cate-
gory of works in which the creative spark is utterly lacking or
so trivial as to be virtually nonexistent." Feist, 499 U.S. at
359 (citation omitted). Therefore, the Papers were works ame-
nable to common law copyright protection, and the district
court correctly so held.

Ownership of the Copyright at the
Time of Original Publication

The district court held that even though a common law
copyright was created at the time the Papers came into being,
the Foundation itself had not adequately shown that it owned
that copyright in 1955, when it published the Book, so as to
entitle it to claim the statutory copyright. Urantia, 895 F.
Supp. at 1350-51, 1354. Because the district court was of the
opinion that the Foundation had come into possession of the
plates "serendipitously," the court found that the Foundation
had failed to establish how it had become the "proprietor" of
the copyright in the Papers. Id. at 1354.

The district court accurately observed that the selection of
Dr. Sadler's patient as the amanuensis for communicating the
teachings eventually transcribed on the plates was indeed ser-
endipitous. We believe the controlling issue, however, is
whether, as of the time of publication, the Foundation, the
copyright claimant, could trace its title back to the humans
who owned the original common law copyright. We hold that
it could.

[6] Under the 1909 Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. SS 1, et. seq.
(superseded in 1978), an unpublished work was protected by
common law copyright from the moment it was created, until
it was either published with proper notice, or otherwise
received protection under federal copyright law. See Twin
Books Corp. v. Walt Disney Co., 83 F.3d 1162, 1165 (9th Cir.
1996). The Papers were therefore protected by common law
copyright from the moment they were created by the members
of the Contact Commission until publication of the Book. The
question is whether those humans transferred that copyright to
the Foundation.

[7] Even though the precise words "assign" or "transfer" do
not appear in the trust instrument, the members of the Contact
Commission demonstrated their intent to transfer the common
law copyright in the Papers to the Foundation both through
the language of the trust instrument itself, and by delivery of
the printing plates to the Foundation. The trust instrument
provided that the trustees of the Foundation were "to retain
absolute and unconditional control of all plates and other
media for the printing and reproduction of the Urantia Book
and any translation thereof. . . ." See Burton, supra, at 219.
Under the 1909 Act, a common law copyright could be
assigned without the necessity of observing any formalities.
D. Nimmer & M.B. Nimmer, Nimmer on Copyright,
S 10.03[B][2], at 10-45 (1996) [hereinafter Nimmer]. In fact,
the mere possession of the printing plates by the Foundation,
the purported assignee, may have been sufficient to establish
an assignment as against a third party, such as Maaherra, who
does not claim any superior copyright interest. Id. at 10-46.
Professor Nimmer notes that "[t]his was particularly true
where over a long period of time, the author and other inter-
ested parties had acquiesced in the putative assignee's
ownership." Id. (citing, inter alia, Burton, supra). Because the
intent to transfer ownership of the plates to the Foundation
was clear, and the plates were delivered to the Foundation, we
hold that the members of the Contact Commission also
intended to transfer, and did in fact transfer, their copyright in
the Papers to the Foundation. Thus, when the Foundation pub-
lished the Book in 1955, the original statutory copyright in the
Book automatically vested in the Foundation. See Nimmer,
S 9.01[B][2] at 9-17.

That does not conclude our inquiry, however, because we
are dealing here not only with the validity of the original
copyright, but with the validity of the renewal.

Validity of the Renewal

Maaherra challenges on a number of theories, the validity
of the copyright renewal certificate the Foundation obtained
in 1983. The certificate stated that the Foundation was claim-
ing renewal as the "proprietor of copyright in a work made for
hire." Maaherra first contends that the Book was not a "work
made for hire" and that the renewal for that reason is invalid.

The 1983 version of the renewal provision of the 1976
Copyright Act, applicable to the Foundation's renewal, had
two provisos: one dealing with renewals by proprietors of cer-
tain works and the other dealing with the renewals of all other
works. The statute stated in relevant part:

       Any copyright, the first term of which is subsisting
       on January 1, 1978, shall endure for twenty-eight
       years from the date it was originally secured:
       Provided, that in the case of any posthumous work
       or of any periodical, cyclopedic, or other composite
       work upon which the copyright was originally
       secured by the proprietor thereof, or of any work
       copyrighted by a corporate body (otherwise than as
       assignee or licensee of the individual author), or by
       an employer for whom such work is made for hire,
       the proprietor of such copyright shall be entitled to
       a renewal and extension of the copyright in such
       work for the further term of 47 years. . . . And pro-
       vided further, that in the case of any other copy-
       righted work, including a contribution by an
       individual author to a periodical or to a cyclopedic
       or other composite work, the author of such work, if
       still living, or the widow, widower, or children of the
       author, if the author be not living, or if such author,
       widow, widower, or children be not living, then the
       author's executors, or in the absence of a will, his or
       her next of kin shall be entitled to a renewal and
       extension of the copyright in such work for a further
       term of 47 years. . . .

17 U.S.C. S 304(a)(1983).

[8] As to whether the Book was a "work made for hire,"
Maaherra is probably correct that it was not. The Foundation
was never the employer of any of the spiritual beings, of Dr.
Sadler, of the Contact Commission, or of any other entity that
played a role in the creation of the Papers that were eventually
transferred to the Foundation. An employment (or commis-
sioning) relationship at the time the work is created is a condi-
tion for claiming renewal as the proprietor of a "work made
for hire". See 17 U.S.C. S 101; Bleistein v. Donaldson Litho-
graphing Co., 
188 U.S. 239
 (1903); Lin-Brook Builders Hard-
ware v. Gertler, 352 F.2d 298 (9th Cir. 1965); Rohauer v.
Friedman, 306 F.2d 933 (9th Cir. 1962).

Before the district court and on appeal, the Foundation has
contended that it would have been entitled to claim renewal
as the "proprietor of a composite work." The district court
rejected this contention. Urantia, 895 F. Supp. at 1354. The
problem, in the district court's view, was not whether the
structure of the Book satisfied the definition of a "composite
work;" the district court assumed that it did. Rather, the dis-
trict court held that the Foundation had failed to establish
"proprietorship" at the time the original copyright was
secured because it had failed to show a "contractual arrange-
ment entitling [it] to secure copyright in the various
contributions." Urantia, 895 F. Supp. at 1354 (citing Cadence
Industries Corp. v. Ringer, 450 F. Supp. 59, 64 (S.D.N.Y.
1978)). On this point, we have held the court erred. The lan-
guage of the trust instrument was, moreover, very broad, and
sufficient to transfer not only the interest in the original copy-
right term, but in the renewal as well. See Burton, supra, at
219.

Maaherra on appeal also contends that even if the Founda-
tion would have been entitled to secure the Book's renewal
rights as the "proprietor of a composite work, " the inaccuracy
in the description of the claim in the Foundation's application
for renewal destroyed the validity of its renewal copyright.
This issue the district court did not decide.

Timeliness was the only clear statutory requirement for
copyright renewal of a work whose original statutory copy-
right was secured prior to January 1, 1964. The renewal stat-
ute in effect at the time the Foundation renewed its copyright
in the Book required the claimant to apply for and register its
renewal claim within the last year of the original copyright
term. See 17 U.S.C. S 304(a) (1983) (providing that copyright
was properly renewed "where application for . . . renewal . . .
shall have been made to the Copyright Office and duly regis-
tered therein within one year prior to the expiration of the
original term of copyright" and that "in default of the registra-
tion of such application for renewal . . . the copyright in any
work shall terminate at the expiration of twenty-eight years
from the date copyright was originally secured[ ]").2 Thus, the
Foundation had to renew the Book's copyright by December
31, 1983, when the original copyright term was to expire. See
17 U.S.C. S 305 (copyright terms "run to the end of the calen-
dar year in which they would otherwise expire[ ]"). The Foun-
dation timely applied for renewal in January of 1983.

Maaherra contends, however, that timeliness is not enough.
Focusing on the language of the first proviso of Section
304(a), and on a Copyright Office regulation which provides
the manner in which renewal registrations may be corrected,
37 C.F.R. S 201.5(b)(2)(iv), she argues that because the
renewal certificate described the Foundation as the
"proprietor of a work made for hire" rather than as the
"proprietor of a composite work", the renewal registration is
not valid.

The regulation upon which Maaherra relies, provided in
1983:

       Supplementary registration to correct a renewal
       claimant or basis of a claim in a basic renewal regis-
       tration may be made only if the application for sup-
       plementary registration and fee are received in the
       Copyright Office within the statutory time limits for
       renewal. If the error or omission in a basic renewal
       registration is extremely minor, and does not involve
       the identity of the renewal claimant or the legal basis
       of the claim, supplementary registration may be
       made at any time. Supplementary registration is not
       appropriate to add a renewal claimant.

37 C.F.R. S 201.5(b)(2)(iv) (1983). The regulation would thus
have permitted the Foundation to file a supplementary regis-
tration to correct its basic registration at any time during the
renewal period, if the error was minor and did not "involve
the identity of the renewal claimant or the legal basis for the
claim." Id. However, corrections to the "identity" of the
claimant or to the "legal basis of the claim" could only have
been made within the statutory time limits for renewal, which
in this case would have expired December 31, 1983.

Maaherra claims that because the error the Foundation
made in describing the nature of its proprietorship involves
"the legal basis of the claim," the error can no longer be cor-
rected, and therefore, the Book was injected into the public
domain in 1983. There are serious problems with this argu-
ment.

[9] First, it is not at all clear that the regulation's reference
to the "legal basis of the claim" contemplates the identifica-
tion of a particular type of proprietorship described in the first
proviso of section 304(a). Given the structure of the statute,
the general term "proprietor" was probably sufficient to iden-
tify the "legal basis" of the renewal claim in 1983.

[10] Moreover, we have found no case that has ever held
a renewal invalid for lack of an adequate description of the
basis of the claim. The only cases in which renewals have
been forfeited have involved renewals filed by the wrong
claimant, not by someone describing the wrong type of pro-
prietorship. The second proviso of section 304(a) establishes
the priority to renewal rights for authors and their statutory
heirs. There are cases holding renewal registrations under this
proviso void, where the renewal was filed in the name of a
person who was a member of the next succeeding class, when
members of a priority class living at the time the renewal
vested should have filed the renewal, but did not. See Nimmer
S 9.05 [D][1] at 9-85 (citing, inter alia, Marks Music Corp. v.
Borst Music Pub. Co. Inc., 110 F. Supp. 913 (D.N.J. 1953);
Yardley v. Houghton Mifflin Co., 25 F. Supp. 361 (S.D.N.Y.
1938), aff'd, 108 F. 28 (2d Cir. 1939)). In such cases, how-
ever, in contrast to the situation here, the person filing for
renewal was not statutorily entitled to renew under any the-
ory; someone else was. See International Film Exch., Ltd. v.
Corinth Films, Inc., 621 F. Supp. 631 (S.D.N.Y. 1985)
(rejecting renewal application because the renewal was filed
in the name of a licensee, instead of being filed in the name
of the author, or by the copyright proprietor). As we have
seen, the Foundation was in fact a proper renewal claimant
because it was the "proprietor" of the Book both in 1955 and
in 1983.

[11] Furthermore, even the requirement of accurate identifi-
cation of the renewal claimant has not been rigidly enforced.
In at least one case, the actual name of the claimant corpora-
tion was mistakenly stated in the renewal application, yet the
infringement action was permitted to go forward. Bourne Co.
v. Walt Disney Co., 25 U.S.P.Q.2d 1975, 1976 (S.D.N.Y.
1992), aff'd on other grounds, 68 F.3d 621 (2d Cir. 1995),
cert. denied, 116 S. Ct. 1890 (1996). See also Nimmer,
S 9.05[D][1] at 9-85-86, (favorably citing Bourne for refusing
to cause a forfeiture of copyright based on "useless
technicalities").

[12] All of this strongly suggests that even if the Founda-
tion can no longer correct the "work made for hire" descrip-
tion of its proprietorship claim on the renewal form, the
Foundation's renewal copyright is not invalid. There is, how-
ever, even more compelling authority for this result.

[13] The case law is overwhelming that inadvertent mis-
takes on registration certificates do not invalidate a copyright
and thus do not bar infringement actions, unless the alleged
infringer has relied to its detriment on the mistake, or the
claimant intended to defraud the Copyright Office by making
the misstatement. See, e.g., Nimmer, S 7.20 at 7-201 and n.6
("[A] misstatement or clerical error in the registration applica-
tion if unaccompanied by fraud will not invalidate the copy-
right or render the registration certificate incapable of
supporting an infringement action."), S.O.S, Inc. v. Payday,
886 F.2d 1081 (9th Cir. 1989); Harris v. Emus Records, 734
F.2d 1329 (9th Cir. 1984) (citing to Burton, supra, and
Urantia Foundation v. King, 194 U.S.P.Q. 171, 174-175
(C.D. Cal. 1977)); Datastorm Technologies, Inc. v. Excalibur
Communications, Inc., 888 F. Supp. 112 (N.D. Cal. 1995);
Gund, Inc. v. Swank, Inc., 673 F. Supp. 1233 (S.D.N.Y.
1987); Craft v. Kobler, 667 F. Supp. 120 (S.D.N.Y. 1987);
Dynamic Solutions, Inc. v. Planning & Control, Inc., 646 F.
Supp. 1329 (S.D.N.Y. 1986); Alart Assocs. Inc. v. Aptaker,
279 F. Supp. 268 (S.D.N.Y. 1968), appeal dismissed, 402
F.2d 779 (2d Cir. 1968).

We are aware that most of the cases applying a fraud or
prejudice standard, and permitting infringement actions
despite inaccuracies in registration, involve defects in original
registration certificates rather than in renewals. Original regis-
trations can be changed at any time during the original term
of copyright, while, as discussed earlier, certain errors in the
renewal registration of pre-1964 works, such as the Book,
could only be corrected in the last year of the original term.
17 U.S.C. S 304(a)(1983); 37 C.F.R. S 201.5(b)(2)(iv)(1983).
However, the reasoning of these cases does not turn on
whether or not correction is possible. Indeed, in this circuit,
a lead decision applying the fraud and prejudice standard,
contains language strongly implying that this standard should
apply across the board, regardless of whether the applicable
statutes or regulations permit corrections. See Harris, supra,
at 1335 (rejecting defendant's contention that the work had
entered into the public domain because of inaccuracies in the
copyright registration, and noting that the 1909 Copyright Act
did not contain a statutory or regulatory scheme providing
opportunity for correction of mistakes in copyright registra-
tions).

These cases generally do not require perfection, but instead
base their analyses on principles of fair and non-formalistic
administration of the copyright laws. See, e.g., Huk-a-Poo
Sportwear, Inc. v. Little Lisa, Ltd., 195 U.S.P.Q. 763
(S.D.N.Y. 1977) ("This court is mindful of the policy that
courts seek to preserve copyrights rather than invalidate them
on the basis of minor defects in registration certificates.");
Craft, supra, at 125 (even though the copyright owner had not
claimed "work for hire" on the certificate of registration, the
court noted that "if the facts sustain his position and if it
appears that the misstatement was inadvertent, little turns on
the error; the copyright is not thereby invalidated, nor is the
certificate of registration rendered incapable of supporting the
action").

Maaherra argues that the Foundation's claim is neverthe-
less barred even under the holdings of these cases because the
Foundation intended to defraud the Copyright Office when it
stated it was the "proprietor of a work made for hire." See
Dynamic Solutions, supra, at 1341 ("Errors on the registration
application do not affect plaintiff's right to sue for infringe-
ment unless they are knowing and might have caused the
Copyright Office to reject the application.") Maaherra asserts
that the Foundation did not want to reveal to the Copyright
Office that the "authors" were celestial beings because the
Copyright Office would have rejected the application.

[14] There is no merit to this contention. The Foundation
deposited two copies of the Book with the Copyright Office.
The Book clearly describes its own origin as having been cre-
ated at the instance of: "Planetary celestial supervisors [who
initiated] those petitions that resulted in the granting of the
mandates making possible the series of revelations of which
this presentation is a part." We conclude that there has been
no fraud on the Foundation's part, and no prejudicial reliance
on Maaherra's part.

[15] We therefore hold that the Foundation's renewal copy-
right is valid, and that Maaherra infringed it.

For the foregoing reasons, the decision of the district court
is REVERSED and the case REMANDED for further pro-
ceedings on damages. the end

_______________________________________________________________

FOOTNOTES

1 The district court published six orders: Urantia Foundation v.
Maaherra, 895 F. Supp. 1328 (D. Ariz. 1995); Urantia Foundation v.
Maaherra, 895 F. Supp. 1329 (D. Ariz. 1995); Urantia Foundation v.
Maaherra, 895 F. Supp. 1335 (D. Ariz. 1995); Urantia Foundation v.
Maaherra, 895 F. Supp. 1337 (D. Ariz. 1995); Urantia Foundation v.
Maaherra, 895 F. Supp. 1338 (D. Ariz. 1995); Urantia Foundation v.
Maaherra, 895 F. Supp. 1347 (D. Ariz. 1995).
2 The harshness of that rule led Congress to amend the renewal provision
in 1992 to provide for automatic renewal. See Copyright Renewal Act of
1992, Pub. L. 102-307, Sec. 101, 106 Stat. 264 (June 26, 1992) (applying
only to works whose original statutory copyright was obtained after
December 31, 1963).