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Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies News

Copyright in the News: Foreign works amendment is valid

January 25th, 2012

On January 18, 2012, the United States Supreme Court handed down a decision in the Golan v. Holder case. This case was a challenge to a 1994 amendment to the copyright law which restored copyright to foreign works that had been in the public domain in the United States. The law was in response to several treaties that the U.S. entered into to help facilitate trade with other countries. One of the issues raised during the trade negotiations was that many works which were still protected in their country of national origin were in the public domain in the U.S. thus causing economic harm to that country. The U.S. then enacted the copyright restoration amendment to address these concerns.

Golan, a music professor, had been using public domain works. When this law passed, he was no longer able to use many of the works and so he challenged the legality of the law. In his lawsuit against the United States, he claimed that Congress had overstepped their bounds by removing works from the public domain and providing them once again with copyright protection. The Supreme Court ruled that Congress has the authority under the U.S. Constitution to make changes to the copyright law and that this change was well within their purview. The restoration of copyright in foreign works amendment is valid.

Source: Donna Ferullo, ferullo@purdue.edu, (765) 494-0978