The Associated Press will launch its news registry on 14 July, opening it up to all members and publishers who want to sign up before the end of 2010, the agency has announced.

The new system will automatically notify the agency and members about how their content is used beyond their own websites. It also stores information identifying each piece of AP content distributed and its terms of use.

The registry will make use of the new microformat for metadata introduced by the AP earlier this month, which has been added to all its news stories online to encourage an industry standard for tagging.

“Beyond analytics, the registry also will set the stage for a new way of doing business as a cooperative,” says Tom Curley, AP president and CEO, in a release.

“Every content creator who uses the registry will be able to set the rights for the use of that content, so that it can be copied legally or used in new products that the industry or others create with proper permission and compensation.”

More than 200 AP member newspapers have signed up as beta testers of the system and the agency expects this number to reach 600 by the July launch date.