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US Supreme Court Extends Copyright Protection to Foreign Works
The US Supreme Court ruled 6-2 that a 1994 law that brought the United States in line with global intellectual property conventions violated neither US copyright law nor free-speech rights guaranteed by the constitution. In 1994, to improve US implementation of Convention rules, and as part of the US response to the Uruguay Round of World Trade Organisation talks, Congress granted foreign works under copyright protection the same protection available to US works.
Congress therefore has the authority to pull works such as Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, Picasso's Guernica, films by Alfred Hitchcock and symphonies by Stravinsky that were in the public domain and put them back under copyright protection.
The Plaintiffs argued that they cannot play the protected works without paying royalties. Their argument was supported by internet titan such as Google and American Civil Liberties Union that the law was an infringement on their rights to free speech.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, ruling in favour of the Defendants, wrote that the 1994 law gives foreign copyright holders the assurance that their works will be protected under US copyright law "for the remainder of the term of their protection in their home country”.
Further readings can be found at:
http://reut.rs/xlNEeB
For a copy of the Supreme Court case, Golan v. Attorney General Eric Holder, No. 10-545, please click here:
http://bit.ly/ibFAqZ