Lawrence Golan, et al. v. Eric H. Holder, JR., Attorney General, et al. (565 U.S. 302)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided January 18, 2012 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 565 U.S. 302 · 132 S. Ct. 873
- Decided
- January 18, 2012
- Term
- October Term 2011
- Vote
- 6–2
- Majority author
- Justice Ginsburg
- Issue area
- Economic Activity
- Disposition
- Affirmed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court. The Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works (Berne Convention, Convention, or Berne), which took effect in 1886, is the principal accord governing international copyright relations. Latecomer to the international copyright regime launched by Berne, the United States joined the Convention in 1989. To perfect U. S. implementation of Berne, and as part of our response to the Uruguay round of multilateral trade negotiations, Congress, in 1994, gave works enjoying copyright protection abroad the same full term of protection available to U. S. works. Congress did so in § 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA), which grants copyright protection to preexisting works of Berne member countries, protected in their country of origin, but lacking protection in the United States for any of three reasons: The United States did not protect works from the country of origin at the time of publication; the United States did not protect sound recordings fixed before 1972; or the author had failed to comply with U. S. statutory formalities (formalities Congress no longer requires as prerequisites to copyright protection). The URAA accords no protection to a foreign work after its full copyright term has expired, causing it to fall into the public domain, whether under the laws of the country of origin or of…
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