Managers and the Legal Environment 7th Edition by David Madsen, Constance Bagley

Exercise 9

Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, of the U.S. Constitution (the Copyright Clause) grants Congress the power to grant copyrights to authors, but only for "limited [t]imes" and to "promote the [p]rogress of the useful [a]rts." Section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) granted copyright protection to various foreign works that were previously in the public domain in the United States. In effect, section 514 extended copyright protection to works that had previously not been eligible for copyright protection and were therefore in the public domain. Is this provision constitutional? What policy arguments would you make for and against the provision? [Golan v. Holder, 609 F.3d 1076 (10th Cir. 2010), cert. granted, 131 S. Ct. 160 (2011).]