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6 

GOLAN v. HOLDER 

Opinion of the Court 

ations were ongoing over the North American Free Trade
Agreement  (NAFTA),  Mexican  authorities  complained
about  the  United  States’  refusal  to  grant  protection,  in 
accord  with  Article  18,  to  Mexican  works  that  remained 
under  copyright  domestically.    See  Intellectual  Property
and International Issues, Hearings before the Subcommit-
tee  on  Intellectual  Property  and  Judicial  Administration,
House Committee on the Judiciary, 102d Cong., 1st Sess., 
168  (1991)  (statement  of  Ralph  Oman,  U. S.  Register  of
Copyrights).5    The  Register  of  Copyrights  also  reported 
“questions” from Turkey, Egypt, and Austria.  Ibid.  Thai-
land  and  Russia  balked  at  protecting  U. S.  works,  copy-
righted  here  but  in  those  countries’  public  domains,  until 
the  United  States  reciprocated  with  respect  to  their  au-
thors’  works.  URAA  Joint  Hearing  137  (statement  of  Ira
S.  Shapiro,  General  Counsel,  Office  of  the  U. S.  Trade
Representative  (USTR));  id.,  at  208  (statement  of  Profes-
sor  Shira  Perlmutter);  id.,  at  291  (statement  of  Jason  S. 
Berman,  Recording  Industry  Association  of  America 
(RIAA)).6 

—————— 

(“There is no basis on which [protection of existing works under Article 
18]  can  be  completely  denied.    The  conditions  and  reservations,”  au-
thorized  by  Article  18(3)  [and  stressed  by  the  dissent,  post,  at  23–24] 
are of “limited” and “transitional” duration and “would not be permitted
to  deny  [protection]  altogether  in  relation  to  a  particular  class  . . .  of 
works.”). 

5 NAFTA  ultimately  included  a  limited  retroactivity  provision—a
precursor to §514 of the URAA—granting U. S. copyright protection to 
certain  Mexican  and  Canadian  films.    These  films  had  fallen  into  the 
public domain, between 1978 and 1988, for failure to meet U. S. notice
requirements.  See North American Free Trade Agreement Implemen-
tation  Act,  §334,  107  Stat.  2115;  Brief  for  Franklin  Pierce  Center  for 
Intellectual  Property  as  Amicus  Curiae  14–16.    One  year  later,  Con-
gress  replaced  this  provision  with  the  version  of  17  U. S. C.  §104A  at
issue here.  See 3 M. Nimmer & D. Nimmer, Copyright §9A.03, 9A.04,
pp. 9A–17, 9A–22 (2011) (hereinafter Nimmer). 

6 This  tension  between  the  United States  and  its  new  Berne  counter