LAW WEEK COLORADO
DENVER — Congress acted within its authority when it restored U.S. copyright protection to foreign parties whose works had entered the public domain, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday in Golan v. Holder.
The 1994 Uruguay Round Agreements Act restored the copyrights to foreign works that had lapsed due to failure to comply with formalities, lack of subject matter protection, or lack of national eligibility. These works include books, film and sheet music — Sergei Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf,” for example.
A group of artists who made use of the works while they were in the public domain filed a lawsuit in Colorado’s federal court to challenging the restoration of copyright, arguing that doing so violated their First Amendment rights.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Babcock in 2009 found for the plaintiffs on summary judgment.
“In the United States, that body of law includes the bedrock principle that works in the public domain remain in the public domain,” Babcock wrote. “Removing works from the public domain violated Plaintiffs’ vested First Amendment interests.”
But the 10th Circuit on Monday reversed Babcock’s decision, ordering that the district court enter summary judgment upholding the copyright restoration.
Representing the government in its victory were U.S. Department of Justice attorneys John S. Koppel, Tony West, David Gaouette, William Kanter.
Representing the plaintiffs were Anthony T. Falzone and Julie A. Ahrens of the Center for Internet and Society, Stanford Law School; Hugh Q. Gottschalk and Carolyn J. Fairless of Denver firm Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell; and Lawrence Lessig, Harvard Law School.
