Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/11pdf/10-545.pdf
Page Number: 62.0

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

17 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

impose. 

C 
1 
This statute does not serve copyright’s traditional public
ends, namely the creation of monetary awards that “moti­
vate  the  creative  activity  of  authors,”  Sony,  464  U. S., 
at  429,  “encourag[e]  individual  effort,”  Mazer,  347  U. S., 
at  219,  and  thereby  “serve  the  cause  of  promoting  broad 
public availability of literature, music, and the other arts,” 
Twentieth  Century  Music,  422  U. S.,  at  156.    The  statute 
grants  its  “restored  copyright[s]”  only  to  works  already 
produced.  It  provides  no  monetary  incentive  to  produce
anything  new.    Unlike  other  American  copyright  statutes
from  the  time  of  the  Founders  onwards,  including  the
statute  at  issue  in  Eldred,  it  lacks  any  significant  copy­
right-related quid pro quo.

The majority seeks to avoid this awkward fact by refer­
ring  to  past  congressional  practice  that  mostly  suggests 
that  Congress  may  provide  new  or  increased  protection 
both  to  newly  created  and  to  previously  created,  works. 
Ante, at 16, 18; Act of May 31, 1790, §1, 1 Stat. 124 (con­
ferring its new federal copyright on new works as well as 
old); Act of July 3, 1832, §3, 4 Stat. 559 (authorizing new 
patents  for  past  and  future  inventors  who  inadvertently
failed  to  comply  with  applicable  statutory  formalities); 
McClurg v. Kingsland, 1 How. 202 (1843) (applying an act 
deeming a past or future inventor’s patent valid despite it
being  briefly  used  by,  for  example,  the  inventor’s  employ­
er).  I do not dispute that copyright power.  Insofar as such 
a statute does the former, i.e., extends protection to newly
created material, it embodies copyright’s traditional justi­
fication—eliciting  new  production.  And  I  do  not  doubt 
that Congress may then also include existing works within 
the  scope  of,  say,  increased  protection  for  equitable  and 
administrative  reasons.    See  Eldred,  537  U. S.  at  204,