Supreme Court protects foreign works under U.S. copyright law

According to Adli Law Group,
The Berne Convention, signed in 1886, was meant to provide international recognition of copyrights. Many copyrighted works were denied protection however, either because the country of origin was not a party to the convention, or because the work did not comply with technical U.S. copyright requirements. Some of these works had been denied copyright protection in the U.S. for the past 60 years, and instead have been available free in the public domain.
In 1994, Congress granted copyright protection to millions of these foreign works that had previously been denied copyright protection. The law was challenged by those who wanted to use the foreign works, arguing that these works have been free to use in the public domain, and that Congress did not have the authority to take works out of the public domain. Chief among the challengers was Google Inc., which scanned more than one million books into its Google Books Library Project.
The U.S…. Supreme Court recently disagreed with Google in an important victory for all copyright holders throughout the world, especially those families of the creators of the foreign works who were denied the benefits provided under international copyright law.
U.S. copyright holders will also benefit from this Supreme Court ruling because it will be easier to protect U.S. copyrights throughout the world now that the U.S. is acting in full compliance with the Berne Convention.
In effect this law means that those who wish to use a foreign work that is now protected by copyright must pay the owner a licensing or rental fee, in the same way that they must pay to use U.S. copyrighted works. It is also possible that the owner will not grant permission for the work to be used at all.
This ruling,

Published:
15.02.12
Category:
IP News