Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/11pdf/10-545.pdf
Page Number: 48

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

3 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

R. Posner, The Economic Structure of Intellectual Proper­
ty Law 68–70, 213–214 (2003).  Consequently, the original 
British copyright statute, the Constitution’s Framers, and
our  case  law  all  have  recognized  copyright’s  resulting
and necessary call for balance. 

At  the  time  the  Framers  wrote  the  Constitution,  they 

were  well  aware  of  Britain’s  18th-century  copyright  stat­
ute,  the  Statute  of  Anne,  8  Anne,  ch.  19  (1710),  and  they
were  aware  of  the  legal  struggles  that  produced  it.    That 
statute sought in part to control, and to limit, preexisting 
monopolies that had emerged in the book trade as a result 
of the Crown’s having previously granted special privileg­
es  to  royal  favorites.  The  Crown,  for  example,  had  char­
tered  the  Stationers’  Company,  permitting  it  to  regulate 
and  to  censor  works  on  the  government’s  behalf.  The 
Stationers  had  thereby  acquired  control  over  the  disposi­
tion  of  copies  of  published  works,  from  which  emerged
the  Stationers’  copyright—a  right  conferred  on  company 
members, not authors, that was deemed to exist in perpe­
tuity.  See  L.  Patterson,  Copyright  in  Historical  Perspec­
tive 1–16, 114–150 (1968) (hereinafter Patterson); Walter­
scheid  59–65;  Gómez-Arostegui,  The  Untold  Story  of  the
First  Copyright  Suit  Under  the  Statute  of  Anne  in  1710, 
25 Berkeley Tech. L. J. 1247, 1250–1256 (2010). 

To prevent the continuation of the booksellers’ monopoly 
and to encourage authors to write new books, Parliament 
enacted the Statute of Anne.  It bore the title: “An Act for 
the  Encouragement  of  Learning,  by  vesting  the  Copies  of 
printed  Books  in  the  Authors  or  Purchasers  of  such  Cop­
ies, during the Times therein mentioned.”  And it granted
authors  (not  publishers)  and  their  assignees  the  “sole 
Right  and  Liberty  of  printing”  their  works  for  limited 
periods of time in order to encourage them “to compose and 
write useful Books.”  8 Anne, ch. 19, §1 (emphasis added).
As one historian has put it, “[t]he central plank of the . . .
  To  encourage 
Act  was  . . .    a  cultural  quid  pro  quo.