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Supreme Court to Determine Congress' Authority to Copyright Public Domain Works

by Amar Toor on March 8, 2011 at 01:25 PM

stravinsky's 'firebird'Yesterday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that could determine whether or not Congress can remove works from the public domain and place them under copyright.

At issue is a ruling from the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled in July against a group of orchestra conductors, educators, publishers, and film archivists, whose professional lives rely on public domain works. The plaintiffs filed suit in response to Congress' decision to remove several non-American artistic works from the public domain, in order to comply with an international copyright agreement known as the Berne Convention. The works, which include Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis,' and musical compilations from Igor Stravinsky, had been under public domain in the U.S. but were still copyright protected overseas.

The plaintiffs contested that suddenly having to pay royalties for the works constituted a violation of their First Amendment rights and of the Progress Clause. In defense, the government argued that Congress' action was justified in order for the U.S. to demonstrate "indisputable compliance" with the treaty, and to correct "historic inequities of foreign authors who lost or never obtained copyrights in the United States." The appeals court agreed, ruling that the "United States needed to impose the same burden on American reliance parties that it sought to impose on foreign reliance parties."

Anthony Falzone, executive director of Stanford's Fair Use Project, vehemently urged the Supreme Court to accept the case. "While the scope and duration of copyright protection has changed over time, one aspect of the copyright system has remained consistent: once a work is placed in the Public Domain, it belongs to the public, and remains the property of the public – free for anyone to use for any purpose," Falzone wrote in a blog post. "That principle was respected for more than 200 years, because it represents a critical limit on the intellectual property 'monopoly' the Framers authorized."

Tags: copyright, first amendment, FirstAmendment, international treaty, InternationalTreaty, law, politics, progress clause, ProgressClause, public domain, PublicDomain, supreme court, SupremeCourt, top

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