Erwin, here is the information you requested

[drives fast]

I interpret that to mean that in order to sue another person for copying your work, you need to register your design as your own copyright (regardless of if the other person had registered his version of your work). So you get 2 copyright registrations for similar designs - then you fight it out in court, with one accusing the other of infringement.

with the requirement of a coptright search before registration, that makes it so no two people cannot copyright the same thing. basically....first come first serve. It is the same process as registering a business name, a patient, or a trademark. There is a database and that dbase must be searched prior to any registration to avoid duplicate multi party registrations.
The exception (as Erwin says) is two people registering their copyright worded slightly different (as everybody does) and then leave it up to the two parties to drag each other into court to fight it out for ownership.

Steve Machol,
your concerns and questions are over the exact wording and interpretation I was refering to in most of my previous posts. It makes you wonder why everything is so open to interpretation.