Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/11pdf/10-545.pdf
Page Number: 25.0

Cite as:  565 U. S. ____ (2012) 

21 

Opinion of the Court 

held that the Copyright Clause does not demand that each
copyright provision, examined discretely, operate to induce 
new  works.    Rather,  we  explained,  the  Clause  “empowers 
Congress  to  determine  the  intellectual  property  regimes 
that, overall, in that body’s judgment, will serve the ends 
of  the  Clause.”  Id.,  at  222.  And  those  permissible  ends, 
we held, extended beyond the creation of new works.  See 
id., at 205–206 (rejecting the notion that “ ‘the only way to 
promote  the  progress  of  science  [is]  to  provide  incentives
to create new works’ ” (quoting Perlmutter, Participation in
the  International  Copyright  System  as  a  Means  to  Pro-
mote  the  Progress  of  Science  and  Useful  Arts,  36  Loyola
(LA) L. Rev. 323, 332 (2002))).26 

Even  were  we  writing  on  a  clean  slate,  petitioners’ 
argument would be unavailing.  Nothing in the text of the
Copyright Clause confines the “Progress of Science” exclu-
sively to “incentives for creation.”  Id., at 324, n. 5 (inter-
nal  quotation  marks  omitted).    Evidence  from  the  found-
ing,  moreover,  suggests  that  inducing  dissemination—as 
opposed to creation—was viewed as an appropriate means 
to  promote  science.  See  Nachbar,  Constructing  Copy-
right’s  Mythology,  6  Green  Bag  2d  37,  44  (2002)  (“The 
scope  of  copyright  protection  existing  at  the  time  of  the 
framing,”  trained  as  it  was  on  “publication,  not  creation,” 
“is  inconsistent  with  claims  that  copyright  must  promote 
creative  activity  in  order  to  be  valid.”  (internal  quotation
marks  omitted)).  Until  1976,  in  fact,  Congress  made
“federal  copyright  contingent  on  publication[,]  [thereby] 

—————— 

26 The  dissent  also  suggests,  more  tentatively,  that  at  least  where 
copyright  legislation  extends  protection  to  works  previously  in  the 
public domain, Congress must counterbalance that restriction with new 
incentives to create.  Post, at 8.  Even assuming the public domain were
a  category  of  constitutional  significance,  contra  supra,  at  13–19,  we 
would not understand “the Progress of Science” to have this contingent 
meaning.