Source: https://www.mediainstitute.org/2015/01/29/copyright-experts-in-washington/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 01:53:31+00:00

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To understand the mistakes about expertise that LaPolt and Katyal make, we need to explore some thorny constitutional issues; once we have a good understanding of those, we can correct the record on the facts and try to see what led LaPolt astray.
The Copyright Office sits in the Library of Congress – not just as a matter of physical office space, but also as a matter of budget and personnel, i.e., the register of copyrights reports directly to the librarian of Congress. This means that as a matter of day-to-day operations – and that caveat is important – the Copyright Office functions as part of the legislative branch.
There is a powerful, totally legitimate historical reason for having the Copyright Office in the Library of Congress: The deposit requirement for copyright registration of books had a natural synergy with the Library of Congress’s mission to build a universal collection.3 Indeed, at least one House report has said as much.4 In other words, it made sense that the Copyright Office was put where it is.
But any lawyer or political science major who remembers their constitutional law will recognize that this produces some thorny separation-of-powers issues. The Copyright Office is carrying out a range of administrative duties normally done by executive branch agencies (copyright registrations, Section 1201 rulemaking, setting compulsory license rates, etc.) The register is appointed by the librarian of Congress – and in the most recent appointment there was no input from the White House, a situation completely different from how executive branch officers are appointed.
If the Copyright Office’s functions were ever challenged on separation-of-powers grounds, the Department of Justice would almost certainly argue that the office is part of the executive branch – indeed, that was the position taken in a statement the White House issued when President Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in 1998 (and the Copyright Office acquired the Section 1201 rulemaking process). But the Clinton Administration only felt compelled to take that position after Congress’s conference report for the DMCA had characterized the Copyright Office as part of the legislative branch.
That pretty much describes the Copyright Office. When the USPTO director wants to take any significant action, that decision has to be coordinated with the Commerce Department and the rest of the Administration, often through elaborate OMB approval processes. In contrast, when the Copyright Office wants to take any significant action, the register of copyrights is not required to check with anyone in the Administration – and usually doesn’t. When USPTO wants to get involved in a case not involving USPTO activities, it has to do so in coordination with the Department of Justice and other agencies. When the register of copyrights wants to send a letter to a court about a pending case (as has happened), she doesn’t get anyone’s approval.
So when LaPolt proposes giving copyright policy uniquely to the Copyright Office, she is really saying that the president should turn over Administration policy duties in the realm of copyright to “a free standing entity that operates independently from the Executive Branch in conducting its daily operations.” That doesn’t make sense if you are looking at things from the White House’s perspective – and that’s true whether a Republican or a Democrat is sitting in the Oval Office.
Because that doesn’t make sense, since at least the Reagan Administration the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has maintained its own copyright policy experts. For many years, Michael Keplinger was the head of copyright policy at USPTO. Keplinger had himself been a finalist for the job of register and when he left USPTO, Keplinger became the head of copyright policy at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva.
The current register of copyrights, Maria Pallante, is a thoughtful, dedicated public servant who has a rich background in copyright; the same can be said for the associate register of copyrights who handles policy, and the Copyright Office’s general counsel. But the truth is that USPTO currently has a bench of copyright expertise as least as deep as the team at the Copyright Office.
The current head of the USPTO policy shop is Shira Perlmutter, a copyright expert whose law review articles and testimony on copyright have been cited by the Supreme Court three times. After serving as associate register at the Copyright Office for five years, Perlmutter worked in the music and audiovisual industries for a decade. Her USPTO deputy for copyright matters is David Carson, who served 13 years as the general counsel of the Copyright Office and two years more as the Copyright Office’s associate register (not to mention more than a decade in private practice doing copyright law). Michael Shapiro, another senior lawyer on the USPTO copyright team, is the co-author of A Museum Guide to Copyright and Trademark (1999) and a contributing author to Copyright and Consequences: Central European and U.S. Perspectives (2003).
Beyond USPTO, there are a lot of people peppered through the executive branch who have substantial, impressive copyright knowledge. That includes people at State, the U.S. trade representative, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the Intellectual Property Enforcement coordinator, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), and the Justice Department. Indeed, the current associate register at the Copyright Office, Karyn Temple Claggert, got some of her expertise working on the IP task force of the Justice Department.
LaPolt admits to fond memories of her copyright registrations as a musician, but saying that the Copyright Office should do all copyright policy because it carries out the ministerial function of handling registrations confuses expertise in administering a registration system with general policy expertise. Most developed economies have either no copyright registration systems or extremely minimal systems that few people use – so there isn’t even the chance to make this mistake. In Australia, copyright policy is focused in the attorney general’s office; in France and Finland, the copyright policy shop sits in the Ministry of Culture; in the UK, the lead on copyright policy sits with an integrated intellectual property office – same for Jamaica, Peru, and Singapore. No one in these countries would consider that their copyright experts aren’t competent because they don’t run extensive registration systems.
In today’s environment, the Copyright Office doesn’t need more influence over policy – the Copyright Office is regularly included in informal Administration meetings, while retaining its own independent voice and a unique relationship to legislators that executive branch agencies can only envy. What the Copyright Office needs is more money to bring its registration systems into the 21st century.
The truth is that the Copyright Office is being starved for funding, partly because it sits in the Library of Congress. Copyright registration fees do not cover the costs of the current system, meaning that the office relies on congressional handouts as managed by the Library of Congress’s leadership. In contrast, the USPTO is a fee-funded agency: Patent and trademark fees not only fully support the patent and trademark registration system, but also finance USPTO’s vast policy apparatus and international operations (including IP attaches in many U.S. embassies around the world).
House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) should provide the leadership and funding to make our country’s copyright registration system fully modern – online, searchable, efficient, and transparent. No piece of copyright reform could do more to improve the system for both copyright owners and copyright users. Much needs to be done to help the Copyright Office move forward, but the discussion isn’t helped by strange, ill-informed commentaries about control of copyright policy and where the experts are.
2. The Dec. 15, 2014, oral argument can be watched here: http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/media/view_video.php?pk_vid=0000006884. Mr. Katyal’s comment comes at approximately the 27-minute mark.
3. The first U.S. copyright law was in 1790; the Library of Congress was established 10 years later in 1800. American copyright law throughout this period required “deposit,” but it was not until 1870 that Congress stipulated that “[a]ll records and other things relating to copyrights and required by law to be preserved, shall be under the control of the Librarian of Congress.” Prior to that, publishers had been required to deposit books with, first, the State Department, then the Interior Department, and then the Patent Office. Edward Samuels, The Illustrated History of Copyright 212 (2000).
4. In 1993, a bill passed the House of Representatives to abolish the 17 U.S.C. 411(a) registration requirement. The House report accompanying the legislation found that the incentives in the Copyright Act for registration were primarily intended to secure copies of works for the Library of Congress. H.R. Rep. No. 388, 103rd Cong., 1st Sess. 12 (1993).
5. Eltra v. Ringer, 579 F.2d 294 (4th Cir. 1978).
6. Keeffe v. Library of Congress, 777 F.2d 1573, 1574 (D.C. Cir. 1985).
7. United States v. Brooks, 945 F. Supp. 830, 834 (E.D. Pa. 1996).
8. See, e.g., Andy Gass, Considering Copyright Rulemaking: The Constitutional Question, 27 Berkeley Tech. L.J. 1047 (2012); Graeme Dinwoodie, The Development and Incorporation of International Norms in the Formation of Copyright Law, 62 Ohio St. L. J. 733, 764 (2001) (Copyright Office is “strictly part of the legislative branch”); Julie Cohen, WIPO Copyright Treaty Implementation in the United States: Will Fair Use Survive?, 21 Eur. Intell. Prop. Rev. 236 (1999) (describing the separations-of-powers problem and noting “[t]he President cannot relocate the Copyright Office (and, implicitly, the Library of Congress) within the executive branch simply by issuing a statement.”).
9. Intercollegiate Broadcast System, Inc. v. Copyright Royalty Board, 574 F.3d 748, 756 (D.C. Cir. 2009). To be accurate, such a decision would call into question the registrations rather than the copyrights.
10. Live365, Inc. v. Copyright Royalty Board, Civil Action No. 09-01662 (RBW) (D.C. Dist. Feb. 23, 2010) at 26.
11. 35 U.S.C. § 2 (b)(8-9). This statutory language was put into Title 35 by the American Inventors Protection Act of 1999, available at http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/speeches/s1948gb1.pdf.

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