The 1976 Copyright Act significantly expanded intellectual property protection for dance by recognizing “choreographic works” as original works of authorship eligible for copyright protection. (Before the 1976 Act, narrative dance could be protected as a dramatic work, but abstract dance could not.) However, when Congress enacted the statute, it did not provide guidance for a key question: what is a choreographic work? Confronted with this issue, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has adopted the definition of “choreography” set forth in the Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices: “the composition and arrangement of a related series of dance movements and patterns organized into a coherent whole.” The court also weighed in on the scope of copyright protection for choreographic works and provided guidelines for lower courts to use when assessing a claim of copyright infringement. However, the court ultimately declined to decide whether all choreographic works are subject to a virtually identical or substantially similar standard when analyzing a claim of copyright infringement.
