Golan v. Holder

Golan v. Holder
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 5, 2011 Decided January 18, 2012
Full case name	Lawrence Golan, et al. v. Eric H. Holder, Jr., Attorney General, et al.
Docket no.	10-545
Citations	565 U.S. 302 (more) 132 S. Ct. 873; 181 L. Ed. 2d 835
Case history
Prior	Golan v. Ashcroft, 310 F. Supp. 2d 1215 (D. Colo. 2004); affirmed sub nom. Golan v. Gonzales, 501 F.3d 1179 (10th Cir. 2007); on remand, Golan v. Holder, 611 F. Supp. 2d 1165 (D. Colo. 2009); reversed, 609 F.3d 1076 (10th Cir. 2010); cert. granted, 562 U.S. 1270 (2011).
Holding
"Limited time" language of Copyright Clause does not preclude the extension of copyright protections to works previously in the public domain. Tenth Circuit affirmed.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy Clarence Thomas · Ruth Bader Ginsburg Stephen Breyer · Samuel Alito Sonia Sotomayor · Elena Kagan
Case opinions
Majority	Ginsburg, joined by Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Sotomayor
Dissent	Breyer, joined by Alito
Kagan took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws applied
Uruguay Round Agreements Act, Copyright Clause

Golan v. Holder,^[a] 565 U.S. 302 (2012), was a US Supreme Court case that dealt with copyright and the public domain. It held that the "limited time" language of the United States Constitution's Copyright Clause does not preclude the extension of copyright protections to works previously in the public domain.

In particular, the case challenged the constitutionality of the application of Section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act of 1994, which implemented the provisions of trade agreements seeking to equalize copyright protection on an international basis. In the United States, the Act newly granted copyright status to foreign works previously in the public domain.

The two main arguments against the application of the Act in the case were that restoring copyright violates the "limited time" language of the United States Constitution's Copyright Clause, and that restoring to copyright works that had passed into the public domain interferes with the people's First Amendment right to use, copy and otherwise exploit the works and to freely express themselves through these works, thus also violating the Constitution's Copyright Clause.^[1]

The US Supreme Court held on January 18, 2012 that Section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act does not exceed Congress's authority under the Copyright Clause, and the court affirmed the judgment of the lower court by 6–2, with the opinion written by Justice Ginsburg.^[2][1][3] The practical effect of the decision is to confirm that works that were previously free to use, such as Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, are no longer in the public domain and are subject to use only with the permission of the copyright holder, such as through paid licensing, until their copyright term expires again.^[4]

Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page).