Rita Lott Is a Poet

Rita Lott is a poet. She doesn't want to pay for copyright registration for every single poem she writes, so she generally collects a year's worth and sends them off each January 1^st. It just so happens that a poem Rita wrote in July is "stolen" from her desk by Betty Larceny. Betty publishes the poem in August. Rita may be furious but there is nothing she can do because the poem was published before Rita registered the copyright.