Opinion ID: 3035128
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Historical & Regulatory Background

Text: As part of the enumerated powers vested in the federal government, the Constitution provides Congress with the power “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 8. Pursuant to this authority, Congress enacts copyright legislation. The first enactment of concern in this case is the 1909 Copyright Act. Act of Mar. 4, 1909, ch. 320, § 23, 35 Stat. 1075 (1909). This enactment responded to authors’ complaints that the existing protection term was inadequate because many authors were outliving the protection and thereby being denied the proper fruits of their labor. See Arguments on S. 6330 & H.R. 19853, Before the Comms. on Patents, 59th Cong., 1st Sess. 116-21 (1906) (statement by Samuel Clemens (a/k/a Mark Twain) asserting that the term of protection was not long enough). Congress addressed those complaints by extending the renewal period from 14 years to 28 years, making copyright protection possible for a total of 56 years. Act of Mar. 4, 1909, ch. 320, § 23, 35 Stat. 1075 (1909). Almost seven decades later, Congress enacted the 1976 Copyright Act, which forms the foundation of current copyright law. The two-term structure of a fixed term followed by a renewal term was eliminated. See Copyright Act of 1976, Pub. L. No. 94-553, 90 Stat. 2541 (1976) (codified at 17 U.S.C. §§ 101-808). In its place, Congress established a single term for all copyrights created after January 1, 1978; the maximum 56-year term under the 1909 Act was replaced with a term of the author’s life plus 50 years. 17 U.S.C. § 302(a). Works published or registered before January 1, 1978 would be protected for a maximum of 75 years from the date of pub16010 MILNE v. STEPHEN SLESINGER, INC. lication or 100 years from the date of creation, whichever was less. 17 U.S.C. § 303. On October 27, 1998, President Clinton signed into law the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 (“CTEA”), Pub. L. No. 105-298, 112 Stat. 2827 (1998) (codified at 17 U.S.C. §§ 108, 203, 301-304). As its name suggests, the statute further expanded the term of copyright protection, extending the term of all existing and future copyrights by a period of 20 years. Specifically, Congress broadened the term of copyright protection prospectively to works created after its effective date from the life of the author plus 50 years to the life of the author plus 70 years.1 17 U.S.C. §§ 302(a), 304(a)- (b). The statute also enlarged the term of protection retroactively to previously granted copyrights, extending their term to a maximum of 95 years. Id. One of the purposes of the CTEA was to harmonize our copyright term with that of the European Union because, without the change, U.S. authors would receive 20 fewer years of protection than their European counterparts. See 141 Cong. Rec. S3390-92 (daily ed. Mar. 2, 1995) (statement of Sen. Orrin Hatch); see also 141 Cong. Rec. E379 (daily ed. Feb. 16, 1995) (statement of Rep. Carlos Moorhead). This threatened to cost the United States vast amounts of revenue and its favorable position in the global intellectual-property market. See id. Another reason behind the extension was to provide greater protections for authors and two succeeding generations of their heirs. Sen. Orrin Hatch, Toward a Principled Approach to Copyright Legislation at the Turn of the Millennium, 59 U. PITT. L. REV. 719, 733-34 (1998). The end 1 In the case of a work made for hire — which is “prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment or . . . specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work” (17 U.S.C. § 101) — Congress extended the term of protection from 75 to 95 years from the year of the work’s first publication, or a term of 120 years from the year of its creation, whichever expires first. 17 U.S.C. § 304(a)-(b). MILNE v. STEPHEN SLESINGER, INC. 16011 result is that works that otherwise would have entered the public domain, such as the works at issue in this litigation, were protected for an additional 20 years. Thus, it appears that no copyrighted work will enter the public domain for the next 13 years or so, until January 1, 2019.