Eldred v. Ashcroft

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Eldred v. Ashcroft
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 9, 2002 Decided January 15, 2003
Full case name	Eric Eldred, et al. v. John Ashcroft, Attorney General
Docket no.	01-618
Citations	537 U.S. 186 (more) 123 S. Ct. 769, 154 L. Ed. 2d 683, 71 U.S.L.W. 4052
Decision	Opinion
Case history
Prior	Eldred v. Reno, 74 F. Supp. 2d 1 (D.D.C. 1999); aff'd, 239 F.3d 372 (D.C. Cir. 2001); rehearing and rehearing en banc denied, 255 F.3d 849 (D.C. Cir. 2001); cert. granted, 534 U.S. 1126 (2002); order granting cert. amended, 534 U.S. 1160 (2002).
Subsequent	Rehearing denied, 538 U.S. 916 (2003).
Holding
20-year retroactive extension of existing copyright terms did not violate the Copyright Clause or the First Amendment of the Constitution.
Court membership
Chief Justice William Rehnquist Associate Justices John P. Stevens · Sandra Day O'Connor Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy David Souter · Clarence Thomas Ruth Bader Ginsburg · Stephen Breyer
Case opinions
Majority	Ginsburg, joined by Rehnquist, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas
Dissent	Stevens
Dissent	Breyer
Laws applied
U.S. Const. Art. I, § 8, cl. 8; U.S. Const. amend. I; Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998

Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186 (2003), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States upholding the constitutionality of the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA). The practical result of this was to prevent a number of works from entering the public domain in 1998 and following years, as would have occurred under the Copyright Act of 1976. Materials which the plaintiffs had worked with and were ready to republish were now unavailable due to copyright restrictions.

Internet publisher Eric Eldred was the lead petitioner, and was joined by a group of commercial and non-commercial interests who relied on the public domain for their work (including Dover Publications) and many amici including the Free Software Foundation, the American Association of Law Libraries, the Bureau of National Affairs, and the College Art Association. Eldred was represented by Lawrence Lessig and a team at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.^[1]

Supporting the law were United States Attorneys General Janet Reno and John Ashcroft, along with a set of amici including the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America, ASCAP and Broadcast Music Incorporated.