“Vestigial structure” is defined as “a structure in an organism that has lost all or most of its original function in the course of evolution, such as human appendixes.” (Source: wiktionary.org.) The scientific term seems apt for the longstanding requirement under U.S. copyright law that publishers of a work deposit two physical copies of that work with the Library of Congress. Recently, in Valancourt Books, LLC v. Garland, No. 21-5203, 2023 U.S. App. LEXIS 22715 (D.C. Cir. Aug. 29, 2023), the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that the deposit requirement of 17 U.S.C § 407, as currently applied, violates the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. However, the court stopped short of performing a total deposit requirement-ectomy. While the court seemed sympathetic to a view that, due to statutory amendments that have eliminated procedural hurdles to copyright protection, the deposit requirement has become a relic, the court nevertheless went out of its way to limit its ruling to the facts of the particular case, as explained below.
