The U.S. Copyright Office announced on Tuesday, September 2, that Robert Kasunic, Associate Register and Director of Registration Policy and Practice, has left the Office after 25 years of service. On behalf of the Re:Create Coalition, we congratulate Kasunic on his retirement from federal service and thank him for the vital work he’s done for the copyright community throughout his career so far. Kasunic kept the Constitutional purpose of copyright law—promoting progress—at the center of his thinking, and the public benefited immensely from his principled service. 

Kasunic led the Office’s Registration Program, its largest division, for over a decade, seeing it through a series of major transformations and vastly improving its efficiency and effectiveness.  Under Kasunic’s leadership, the Office published the Third Edition of its Compendium of Copyright Office Practices (the handbook that guides the Copyright Office as it administers the law)—the first update to the Compendium since 1984. Most recently, Kasunic led the Office’s effort to develop a registration policy that accommodates the use of artificial intelligence, giving appropriate priority to the Constitution’s human authorship requirement while recognizing that human creativity is often expressed with the aid of technology. 

Rob has been a vital part of the copyright policy community over the years not only as a public servant, but also as a scholar, a teacher, and a colleague. His landmark article on the second fair use factor is required reading for anyone who wants to understand not just that under-appreciated bit of the statute but fair use and copyright generally. Kasunic is also an adjunct professor at American University’s Washington College of Law, where he has taught copyright and related subjects since 2003. We look forward to Kasunic’s next chapter. We also welcome his successor, Erik Bertin, as Acting Associate Register of Copyrights and Director of Registration Policy and Practice, and wish him luck in this important position.