Court Opinion

ID: 9425348
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:14:28.187193+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:55.023847
License: Public Domain

*572Mr. Justice Douglas,
with whom Mr. Justice Brennan and Mr. Justice Blackmun concur, dissenting.
Article I, § 8, cl. 8, of the Constitution provides:
“The Congress shall have Power ... [t]o 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.”
Madison made a brief comment on this provision governing both patents and copyrights:
“The States cannot separately make effectual provision for either of the cases, and most of them have anticipated the decision of this point, by laws passed at the instance of Congress.”1
We have been faithful to that admonition. In Sears Roebuck & Co. v. Stiffel Co., 376 U. S. 225, 230-231, we said:
“Thus the patent system is one in which uniform federal standards are carefully used to promote invention while at the same time preserving free competition. Obviously a State could not, consistently with the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, extend the life of a patent beyond its expiration date or give a patent on an article which lacked the level of invention required for federal patents. To do either would run counter to the policy of Congress of granting patents only to true inventions, and then only for a limited time. Just as a State cannot encroach upon the federal patent laws directly, it cannot, under some other law, such as that forbidding unfair competition, give protection of a kind *573that clashes with the objectives of the federal patent laws/'''
An unpatentable article is “in the public domain and may be made and sold by whoever chooses to do so.” Id., at 231. In that case we did not allow a State to use its unfair competition law to prevent copying of an article which lacked such novelty that it could not be patented. In a companion case, Compeo Corp. v. Day-Brite Lighting, 376 U. S. 234, 237, where an unfair competition charge was made under state law, we made the same ruling, stating:
“Today we have held in Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Stiff el Co., supra, that when an article is unprotected by a patent or a copyright, state law may not forbid others to copy that article. To forbid copying would interfere with the federal policy, found in Art. I, § 8, cl. 8, of the Constitution and in the implementing federal statutes, of allowing free access to copy whatever the federal patent and copyright laws leave in the public domain.”
Prior to February 25, 1972, copyright protection was not extended to sound recordings. Sears and Compco make clear that the federal policy expressed in Art. I, § 8, cl. 8, is to have “national uniformity in patent and copyright laws,” 376 U. S., at 231 n. 7, a policy bolstered by Acts of Congress which vest “exclusive jurisdiction to hear patent and copyright cases in federal courts . . . and that section of the Copyright Act which expressly saves state protection of unpublished writings but does not include published writings.” Ibid.
Prior to February 15, 1972,2 sound recordings had no *574copyright protection. And even under that Act the copyright would be effective “only to sound recordings fixed, published, and copyrighted on and after the effective date of this Act [Feb. 15, 1972] and before January 1, 1975.” 3
California’s law promotes monopoly; the federal policy promotes monopoly only when a copyright is issued, and it fosters competition in all other instances. Moreover, federal law limits its monopoly to 28 years plus a like renewal period,4 while California extends her monopoly into perpetuity.
Cases like Sears were surcharged with “unfair competition” and the present one with “pirated recordings.” But free access to products on the market is the consumer interest protected by the failure of Congress to extend patents or copyrights into various areas. The drive for monopoly protection is strong as is evident from a reading of the committee reports on the 1971 Act.5 Yet, Congress took but a short step, setting up a trial period to consider the new monopoly approach. It was told that state laws, such as we have in this case, were being challenged on the ground that the Federal Constitution had pre-empted the field, even in absence of a provision for making it possible to obtain a copyright for sound recordings. But the House Committee made only the following comment:
“While the committee expresses no opinion concerning this legal question, it is clear that the extension of copyright protection to sound recordings would resolve many of the problems which have arisen in *575connection with the efforts to combat piracy in State courts.” 6
The Department of Justice in commenting on the proposals that resulted in the 1971 Act told the House:
“We believe that extending copyright to reproduction of sound recordings is the soundest, and in our interpretation of Sears and Compco, the only, way in which sound recordings should be protected. Copyright protection is narrowly defined and limited in duration, whereas state remedies, whose validity is still in doubt, frequently create broad and unwarranted perpetual monopolies. Moreover, there is an immediate and urgent need for this protection.” 7
The need for uniformity was stated by Judge Learned Hand in a dissent in Capitol Records, Inc. v. Mercury Records Corp., 221 F. 2d 657. That case involved the duplication of uncopyrighted sound recordings, the court holding that state law prevailed where there was no federal copyright provision. Judge Hand emphasized in his dissent that “uniformity” was one of the principal purposes of the Patent and Copyright Clause and that uniformity could be obtained only by pre-emption. He said:
“If, for example in the case at bar, the defendant is forbidden to make and sell these records in New York, that will not prevent it from making and selling them in any other state which may regard the plaintiff’s sales as a 'publication’; and it will be practically impossible to prevent their importation into New York. That is exactly the kind of evil at which the clause is directed.” Id., at 667.
I would reverse the judgment below.

 The Federalist No. 43, p. 309 (B. Wright ed. 1961).

 The effective date of Pub. L. 92-140, 85 Stat. 392.

 Id., §3.

 17 U. S. C. § 24.

 H. R. Rep. No. 92-487; S. Rep. No. 92-72.

 H. R. Rep., supra, n. 5, at 3.

 Id., at 13.