Uruguay Round Agreements Act

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The Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) is a federal law of the United States in the field of copyright ( copyright ) with the number 17 USC 104A. It was passed in 1994 following the Uruguay Round .

Subsequent protection for works in the public domain (§ 514 URAA)

prehistory

On March 1, 1989, the United States signed the Bern Convention with retroactive effect to January 1, 1978 , which stipulates a minimum protection period of 50 years after the death of the author without any formal registration or publication requirement. (As in Europe, the copyright protection period was subsequently extended to 70 years.) In the meantime, however, numerous foreign works in the United States had become public domain on the basis of the old law, for example due to a lack of registration, which had previously existed there was required for copyright protection or because protection in the United States had not been renewed.

Under existing law, all works published or registered before 1937, as well as most of the works published or registered between 1937 and 1977, would be in the public domain today. The same would apply to all foreign works whose rightholders had not complied with American formalities or which were published before the USA had entered into copyright agreements with their home state.

Content of the regulation

In order to counter this alleged protection gap and to comply with the obligations of the Berne Convention, the URAA, issued in 1994, contained a provision in § 514 that subject these works to copyright again under certain conditions. The rule, however, means that works that are now in the public domain in their country of origin are now protected in the USA for (in most cases) 95 years from publication. This affects works which were first published in 1923 or later and which were still protected in their country of origin on the date that is decisive for calculating the protection. In most cases this will be January 1, 1996.

Thereafter, only those works are in the public domain that were published or registered before January 1, 1923 or were published or registered between 1923 and 1963 and for which the copyright has not been renewed. Only a tiny number of works that have already been published will go into the public domain before 2019.

Examples

Wannsee Garden by Max Liebermann, 1926 - probably still protected in the USA.

For example, the works of the artist Max Liebermann, who died in 1935 , became public domain in Germany on January 1, 2006. Since they were still protected in Germany on January 1, 1996, images from 1923 and later are still protected by copyright in the USA.

Another example is the British film The 39 Steps by director Alfred Hitchcock from 1935. In Europe this is still protected until at least 2051, since the director died in 1980, but in the USA it has been in the public domain since 1963.

This has an impact, for example, on the Wikimedia Commons media archive , where the principle applies that works must be in the public domain or under a free license both in their country of origin and in the USA. However, a uniform practice for handling such images has not emerged on Wikimedia Commons; images probably protected after the URAA in the US have been both deleted and restored.

Criticism and constitutionality

The URAA is controversial because it subsequently made the public domain smaller. Lawrence Lessig launched model trials against the law. The United States Supreme Court ruled on January 18, 2012 in Golan v. Holder the constitutionality of § 514 URAA with reference to the previously made decision Eldred v. Ashcroft . The right to freedom of expression in the first amendment to the constitution does not give rise to any entitlement to unrestricted use of artistic works. The corresponding restriction is justified by the purpose of the copyright, namely by rewarding the authors and promoting scientific progress and the further development of artistic activity. After all, the legislature did not exceed its powers under the copyright clause of the constitution.

Web links

Commons : URAA  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Yliniva-Hoffmann, Anne : USA: “Works in the public domain can subsequently be subject to copyright again”, MMR-Aktuell 2012, 328565.
  2. ↑ a b c d de la Durantaye, Katharina : "The fight for the public domain", GRUR Int. 2012, 989.
  3. ^ Copyright Restoration of Works in Accordance With the Uruguay Round Agreements Act . Library of Congress, Copyright Office. August 22, 1997. Retrieved September 17, 2015.
  4. ↑ Commons: URAA-restored copyrights ( English ) Wikimedia Commons. Retrieved September 17, 2015.
  5. ^ Supreme Court of the United States, Golan v. Holder, 565 US ___ (2012) = GRUR Int. 2012, 379.