The U S Supreme Court has recently while deciding the case of Golan v. Holder upheld the law relating to Copyright restoration for Public Domain Works. This law allows the grant of copyright protection to a large number of foreign works that have been freely available in the public domain.
Background.
The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, 1886, is the principal accord governing international copyright relations. Article 18 of the Berne Convention, requires countries to protect the works of other member states unless the works ‘copyright term has expired in either the country where protection is claimed or the country of origin. The convention covers all works that were still copyrighted in their source country and that had not entered the public domain in the country where copyright was claimed due to the expiration of a previously granted copyright there.
Till the 20th Century, US have had a different system of Copyright protection, where formalities on the enjoyment and enforcement of Copyright was a must. Non observance of Copyright formalities caused total loss of Copyright protection and the work fell in public domain. Throughout most of the 20th century, the only foreign authors eligible for Copyright Act protection were those whose countries granted reciprocal rights to American authors and whose works were published in the United States. The United Stated joined the Berne Convention in 1989. Despite Article 18, it did not protect any foreign works lodged in the U. S. public domain, many of them works never protected here. In 1994, howev¬er, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights mandated implementation of Berne’s first 21 articles, on the enforcement by the World Trade Organization. In response to this, the US Congress enacted the Uruguay Rounds Agreement Act in December 1994 and §. 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act grants copy¬right protection to works protected in their country of origin, but lacked protection in the U.S. for the following reasons: (1) the U.S. did not protect works from the country of origin at the time of publication, (2) the U.S. did not protect sound records fixed before 1972, or (3) the author had failed to comply with U.S. statutory formalities which formalities are no longer required.
Facts of the case
This case was originally filed in 2001 challenging the constitutionality of the application of Section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act. Petitioners in this case were orchestra conductors, musicians, publishers, and others who formerly enjoyed free access to works §514 removed from the public domain. . The main contentions raised by the petitioners against the application of the Act in the case were that restoring copyright violates the “limited time” language of the Copyright clause in the Constitution of the United States, and secondly that restoration of the copyright works that had passed into the public domain interferes with the peoples' First Amendment right to use, copy and otherwise exploit the works and to freely express themselves through these works which also violates the Copyright clause in the Constitution of the United States.
Decision.
Rejecting the arguments of the Petitioner the Supreme Court in a majority of 6-2 , held Section 514 is valid and in no way violated either the Copyright Clause of the U.S. Constitution, nor the First Amendment. In the Judgement, the Court has clearly stated that the “Congress determined that U.S. interests were best served by our full participation in the dominant system of international copyright protection. Those interests include ensuring exemplary compliance with our international obligations, securing greater protection for U.S. authors abroad, and remedying unequal treatment of foreign authors.”
This ruling by the US Supreme Court demonstrates its compliance to the International Copyright regime and comes as an victory to film and music industries.
