Source: http://www.scribd.com/doc/78744770/Golan-v-Holder
Timestamp: 2014-04-17 00:49:46
Document Index: 675217359

Matched Legal Cases: ['§514', '§514', '§514', '§514', '§514', '§514', '§514', '§514', '§514', '§514', '§514', '§514']

P. 1Golan v HolderGolan v HolderRatings: (0)|Views: 2,073|Likes: 1Published by Ray DowdGolan v Holder, copyright law, copyright act, public domainGolan v Holder, copyright law, copyright act, public domainMore info: categoriesBusiness/Law, Court FilingsPublished by: Ray Dowd on Jan 19, 2012Copyright:Attribution Non-commercialAvailability:Read on Scribd mobile: iPhone, iPad and Android.download as PDF, TXT or read online from ScribdFlag for inappropriate content|Add to collectionSee MoreSee lesshttp://www.scribd.com/doc/78744770/Golan-v-Holder01/19/2012pdftextoriginal 1
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FORTHE TENTH CIRCUITNo. 10–545. Argued October 5, 2011—Decided January 18, 2012The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works(Berne), which took effect in 1886, is the principal accord governinginternational copyright relations. Berne’s 164 member states agreeto provide a minimum level of copyright protection and to treat au-thors from other member countries as well as they treat their own.Of central importance in this case, Article 18 of Berne requires coun-tries to protect the works of other member states unless the works’copyright term has expired in either the country where protection isclaimed or the country of origin. A different system of transnationalcopyright protection long prevailed in this country. Throughout mostof the 20th century, the only foreign authors eligible for Copyright Act protection were those whose countries granted reciprocal rightsto American authors and whose works were printed in the UnitedStates. Despite Article 18, when the United States joined Berne in1989, it did not protect any foreign works lodged in the U. S. publicdomain, many of them works never protected here. In 1994, howev-er, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual PropertyRights mandated implementation of Berne’s first 21 articles, on painof enforcement by the World Trade Organization.In response, Congress applied the term of protection available toU. S. works to preexisting works from Berne member countries. Sec-tion 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) grants copy-right protection to works protected in their country of origin, butlacking protection in the United States for any of three reasons: TheUnited States did not protect works from the country of origin at thetime of publication; the United States did not protect sound record-ings fixed before 1972; or the author had not complied with certain
HOLDERSyllabusU. S. statutory formalities. Works encompassed by §514 are grantedthe protection they would have enjoyed had the United States main-tained copyright relations with the author’s country or removed for-malities incompatible with Berne. As a consequence of the barriersto U. S. copyright protection prior to §514’s enactment, foreign works“restored” to protection by the measure had entered the public do-main in this country. To cushion the impact of their placement inprotected status, §514 provides ameliorating accommodations forparties who had exploited affected works before the URAA wasenacted.Petitioners are orchestra conductors, musicians, publishers, andothers who formerly enjoyed free access to works §514 removed fromthe public domain. They maintain that Congress, in passing §514,exceeded its authority under the Copyright Clause and transgressedFirst Amendment limitations. The District Court granted the Attor-ney General’s motion for summary judgment. Affirming in part, theTenth Circuit agreed that Congress had not offended the CopyrightClause, but concluded that §514 required further First Amendmentinspection in light of Eldred
, 537 U. S. 186. On remand,the District Court granted summary judgment to petitioners on theFirst Amendment claim, holding that §514’s constriction of the publicdomain was not justified by any of the asserted federal interests. TheTenth Circuit reversed, ruling that §514 was narrowly tailored to fitthe important government aim of protecting U. S. copyright holders’interests abroad.
1. Section 514 does not exceed Congress’ authority under the Copy-right Clause. Pp. 13–23.(a) The text of the Copyright Clause does not exclude applicationof copyright protection to works in the public domain.
islargely dispositive of petitioners’ claim that the Clause’s confinementof a copyright’s lifespan to a “limited Tim[e]” prevents the removal of works from the public domain. In
the Court upheld the Cop-yright Term Extension Act (CTEA), which extended, by 20 years, theterms of existing copyrights. The text of the Copyright Clause, theCourt observed, contains no “command that a time prescription, onceset, becomes forever ‘fixed’ or ‘inalterable,’ ” and the Court declined toinfer any such command. 537 U. S., at 199. The construction peti-tioners tender here is similarly infirm. The terms afforded works re-stored by §514 are no less “limited” than those the CTEA lengthened.Nor had the “limited Tim[e]” already passed for the works at issuehere—many of them works formerly denied any U. S. copyright pro-tection—for a period of exclusivity must begin before it may end. Pe-titioners also urge that the Government’s position would allow Con-
3Cite as: 565 U. S. ____ (2012)Syllabusgress to legislate perpetual copyright terms by instituting successive“limited” terms as prior terms expire. But as in
, such hypo-thetical misbehavior is far afield from this case. In aligning theUnited States with other nations bound by Berne, Congress can hard-ly be charged with a design to move stealthily toward a perpetualcopyright regime. Pp. 13–15.(b) Historical practice corroborates the Court’s reading of the Copy-right Clause to permit the protection of previously unprotectedworks. In the Copyright Act of 1790, the First Congress protectedworks that had been freely reproducible under State copyright laws.Subsequent actions confirm that Congress has not understood theCopyright Clause to preclude protection for existing works. Severalprivate bills restored the copyrights and patents of works and inven-tions previously in the public domain. Congress has also passed gen-erally applicable legislation granting copyrights and patents to worksand inventions that had lost protection. Pp. 15–19.(c) Petitioners also argue that §514 fails to “promote the Progress of Science” as contemplated by the initial words of the CopyrightClause. Specifically, they claim that because §514 affects only worksalready created, it cannot meet the Clause’s objective. The creationof new works, however, is not the sole way Congress may promote“Science,”
knowledge and learning. In
, this Court rejecteda nearly identical argument, concluding that the Clause does not de-mand that each copyright provision, examined discretely, operate toinduce new works. Rather the Clause “empowers Congress to deter-mine the intellectual property regimes that, overall, in that body’s judgment, will serve the ends of the Clause.” 537 U. S., at 222.Nothing in the text or history of the Copyright Clause, moreover, con-fines the “Progress of Science” exclusively to “incentives for creation.”Historical evidence, congressional practice, and this Court’s deci-sions, in fact, suggest that inducing the dissemination of existingworks is an appropriate means to promote science. Pp. 20–22.(d) Considered against this backdrop, §514 falls comfortably withinCongress’ Copyright Clause authority. Congress had reason to be-lieve that a well-functioning international copyright system wouldencourage the dissemination of existing and future works. And tes-timony informed Congress that full compliance with Berne would ex-pand the foreign markets available to U. S. authors and invigorateprotection against piracy of U. S. works abroad, thus benefitting cop-yright-intensive industries stateside and inducing greater investmentin the creative process. This Court has no warrant to reject Congress’rational judgment that exemplary adherence to Berne would servethe objectives of the Copyright Clause. Pp. 22–23.2. The First Amendment does not inhibit the restoration author-
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