In addition to placing the appropriate copyright notice on your work and registering the screenplay with the U.S. Copyright Office, it is also wise to register the screenplay or other literary material with the Writers’ Guild of America.
Registration with the WGA Guild does not provide a legal remedy in the event your screenplay content is stolen or infringed upon. Therefore, it should never be done as an alternative to registering the screenplay with the Copyright Office, but in addition. However, registration with the Writers’ Guild of America provides a date certain upon which a claim of authorship by a given author or writer is made to a particular screenplay or other literary material. If a copyright infringement lawsuit is filed, the custodian of records of the Writers Guild of America may be subpoenaed to testify at the trial and produce documentation in order to prove the date that a certain screenplay or other literary property, as registered, existed.
The most important use for WGA registration is for literary material that is not copyrightable. This would include treatments, synopses, outlines and written ideas. This would allow the owner to at least prove the date of existence of such material, in the event it is used by a third party without consent or agreement.
Such registration does not protect a title.
The literary property can be registered electronically through an upload.
The registration fee is $20.00 for non-members; $10.00 for members. Only Visa/MasterCard is accepted for payment of the filing fee.
Once this documentation is registered and the fee paid, the date and time of receipt are recorded. A receipt is provided to you which serves as the official documentation of the registration.
The WGA will accept screenplays, treatments, synopses, outlines, written ideas which are specifically intended for radio, television, theatrical, motion pictures, video cassettes/disks and/or interactive media. Their office will also accept stage plays, novels and other books, short stories, poems, commercials, lyrics and dramas and various media work such as Web series, code and other digital content.
The registration website is https://www.wgawregistry.org/