Copyright Take-Backs? Supreme Court Grants Cert in Golan v. Holder

by Ethan Ackerman

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a long-running copyright dispute over a 1994 law that retroactively restored copyright in some expired foreign works.

In what ScotusBlog is calling “a major test of copyright power,” the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal of the 10th Circuit decision in Golan v. Holder upholding the Uruguay Round Agreements Act, a law that brought the US into compliance with several international treaties. Part of the Act restored copyright protection retroactively to a set of foreign works that had passed into the public domain. Tyler Ochoa has blogged in detail about an earlier ruling on this blog, covering the copyright and First Amendment challenges the Act faced. Tyler Hart also provides a similar writeup of the history of the case and the cert granting. The Center for Internet and Society, at Stanford Law School, has represented plaintiff Golan in the case, and provided their history, supplemented with the relevant filings as well, here.