With a Professional account or by purchasing a single / multiple timestamp, it is possible to insert a co-author when depositing a work.

It is sufficient that one of the co-authors has a Professional account or has purchased a single / multiple timestamp, while the co-authors can also remain with only a Starter account if they do not need to register works exclusively in their own name.

Before explaining how to insert one or more co-authors, we will try to explain if and when to do it :)

Typically, the author is the one who collaborated in the creation of the work. For example, in the case of a piece of music, those who participated in the drafting of the melody or text must be considered as co-author, and not those who collaborated in the performance or arrangement, except in cases in which these are so special that they become part integral to the composition (eg the opening bass in Lou Reed's "Walk on the wild side" or the opening organ phrase in "A whiter Shade of Pale").

Some bands, however, choose to have all members appear as co-authors indiscriminately, as they believe the entire creative process is essentially shared. This is your choice. However, it is important to remember that after choosing to share the percentages of the authors, it is no longer possible to say "a posteriori" - for example after a fight - "in reality I was the author and I added the other co-author only because at that time we used to play together". The choice of co-authors of a piece is not temporary and remains linked to the piece forever. For this reason we always recommend maximum correctness and correspondence to the actual compositional contributions in indicating the authors and their respective percentages.

Also remember that it is not possible to modify an already registered work, much less to add a co-author. If the work was deposited as composed by a single author, it is not possible to affirm later that it was also composed by another author. What can be done is to file an update of the work, this time inserting a co-author who may have collaborated on a new draft. However, it will still be a new timestamp linked to a new deposit and valid from the moment of the second deposit. It can be linked to the previous timestamp, indicating the latter as "mother work", but it will be possible to demonstrate that the work has two or more co-authors only from the date of the second deposit.

We now come to the practical side. How to add a co-author on Patamu?

First of all, each author must personally register on Patamu with all the personal data required for the timestamp to be valid, i.e. name, surname, id number, date of birth. To add a co-author, the person who owns a Professional account or a timestamp must have his name, surname, and username on Patamu.
If the site indicates that a co-author has not entered all the data necessary to be indicated as such, you will need to ask him to log in to the site, go to his or her profile and proceed to fill in all the missing data, and press CONFIRM.

Remember that it is necessary to wait for the co-author to update the profile or register on Patamu before proceeding to register the work.

From that moment you will be able to insert the co-author in your works.

The steps to do this are very simple and are indicated in the deposit process. The first step of the deposit is indeed to add any co-authors.

By clicking on the "Last added" tab, the authors you have already included in your works at least once will appear. Just select them and press "Add", thus speeding up the process.

If the author is not yet present on Patamu, you can invite him or her to register by clicking on the "Invite author" tab, filling in the required data (Name and Email) and clicking on "Send Invitation". The co-author will receive an email from Patamu inviting him to register with a simple free Starter account in order to be included as a co-author. You will therefore have to wait for him to register and indicate his username before proceeding to register the work.

Once the author has been selected, select the type and percentage of participation in the creation of the work for each author. Each author can be inserted more than once if he or she has different participation types. However, the important thing is that the sum of the participations is always 100. Let's take an example: 

Marco devoted himself more to the text but he also contributed to the music. Luca, on the contrary, devoted himself more to the composition of the music, but he too wrote a part of the text. In this case, they could enter the name of both twice and assign, for example:

40% Music to Luca
10% Text to Luca
40% Text to Marco
10% Music to Luca

If all authors have contributed the same way you can press the "Equal Contribution" button to automatically fill in the field.

That's all :)

What happens if a co-author decides to delete their Patamu account?
The authorship proof remains valid, so just download it from your account before deleting it.

We would like to remind you that maintaining the account as a co-author does not imply exclusivity or ties with Patamu and, if no individual works have been uploaded, it can be kept completely free of charge without time limits.

Do you have any other doubts or questions about Patamu Registry operation? Contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , we will be happy to help you or write more tutorials!