Opinion ID: 185372
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The Limitation of limited Times

Text: We come now to the plaintiffs' contention that the CTEAviolates the constitutional requirement that copyrights endureonly for limited Times. This claim at last speaks to theduration rather than to the subject matter of a copyright: Ifthe Congress were to make copyright protection permanent,then it surely would exceed the power conferred upon it bythe Copyright Clause. The present plaintiffs want a limit well short of the ruleagainst perpetuities, of course. And they claim to have foundit -- or at least a bar to extending the life of a subsistingcopyright -- in the preamble of the Copyright Clause: TheCongress shall have power ... To promote the Progress ofScience and useful Arts.... Their idea is that the phraselimited Times should be interpreted not literally but ratheras reaching only as far as is justified by the preambularstatement of purpose: If 50 years are enough to promote... Progress, then a grant of 70 years is unconstitutional. Here the plaintiffs run squarely up against our holding inSchnapper v. Foley, 667 F.2d 102, 112 (1981), in which werejected the argument that the introductory language of theCopyright Clause constitutes a limit on congressional power. The plaintiffs, however, disclaim any purpose to question theholding of Schnapper; indeed, they expressly acknowledgethat the preamble of the Copyright Clause is not a substantive limit on Congress' legislative power. Their argument issimply that the Supreme Court has interpreted the terms'Authors' and 'Writings' in light of that preamble, and thatthis Court should do the same with 'limited Times.'  The problems with this argument are manifest. First, onecannot concede that the preamble is not a substantive limitand yet maintain that it limits the permissible duration of acopyright more strictly than does the textual requirementthat it be for a limited Time. Second, although the plaintiffs claim that Feist supports using the preamble to interpretthe rest of the Clause, the Court in Feist never suggests that the preambleinforms its interpretation of the substantive grant of power tothe Congress (which there turned upon the meaning of Authors and of Writings, each standing alone). 499 U.S. at345-47. Similarly, the Trade-Mark Cases cited in Feist restupon the originality implied by invention [and] discoveryand by the writings of authors, and make no reference at allto the preamble. 100 U.S. at 93-94.