Neither the Justice Department nor the White House responded to requests to comment on the issue. The Library of Congress declined to comment.
Perkins and Neves did not enter the USCO office and did not assume the role they played to fill the day they appeared. Since they left, sources in the Library of Congress told Wired that they never returned and did not assume any responsibilities related to the role. The sources said Congress is reaching an agreement with the White House on the dispute over the personnel.
A congressional aide familiar with the situation told Wired that Blanche, Perkins and Nevis were not on the job “because they had no job to show up.” The aide continued: “As we have always insisted, the president has no right to appoint them. Robert Newlen has been an acting librarian in Congress.”
If the conversation happens, they still have no public opinion. But Perlmutter does have some MPs publicly around her. “The president has no right to delete the copyright register. This power is only with the librarians of the Congressional Library. I feel relieved that the situation in the library and the copyright office has stabilized after the government’s unconstitutional attempt to seize the executive branch. I look forward to a quick fix in Bipatis’ way.”
Meanwhile, the copyright office is in a strange position to try to keep going, as if it wasn’t missing its head. According to USCO spokesman Lisa Berardi Marflak, the copyright office suspended issuing the registration certificate “out of a lot of caution” after Perlmutter was fired. It resumed activity on May 29, but is now sending a registration certificate with a blank dot signature, and Perlmutter’s signature will usually be in.
This unusual change has prompted copyright experts to take into account whether registration is more vulnerable to legal challenges. The Copyright Office insists that they are valid: “The signature of the register does not require a registration to appear on the registration certificate,” Berardi Marflak said.
However, in a motion related to Perlmutter’s lawsuit, she claimed that sending registration without signatures opened the registration, and copyright experts pointed out something outside. “It is true that the law does not explicitly require signatures,” said IP attorney Rachael Dickson. “But the law does explicitly say that this is a copyright register that determines whether the material submitted for the application has a copyright subject.”
No one served as a register, and Dixon believed that it was reasonable to not meet the statutory requirements. “If you take them out of the equation completely, you have a very big problem,” she said. “The litigants who try to challenge the validity of copyright registration will have an impact on that.”
Perlmutter’s lawyers believe leaving the copyright office on the issue of registration certificates will lead to dysfunction because the register performs various tasks, from providing various tasks to Congress to re-certifying organizations such as the Machinery Licensing Collectives (the nonprofit organization responsible for managing groceries) for the United States to play and download groceries in the United States. As the certification of MLC is currently ongoing, Perlmutter usually moves forward through the re-certification organization; as her lawsuit points out, now, the re-certification process is not moving forward.
