Supreme Court to consider whether Congress can restore copyright

The U.S. Supreme Court this week will hear a case that looks at whether Congress has the power to restore copyright protection.

The case was brought by orchestra conductors, teachers, film archivists and others who have been freely using music like Prokofiev’s "Peter and the Wolf" and films like Hitchcock’s 1932 story about jewel thieves “Number 17.”

Normally, under U.S. laws, those older works wouldn’t be protected. But the U.S. has signed an international treaty that requires respect for foreign copyrights if the country of origin still protects the work.

Georgetown Law Professor Neal Katyal says Congress then passed a law taking those specific works out of the public domain. "And so the question before the court is simply whether or not that restoration of copyright is constitutional."

In their petition asking for Supreme Court review, the artists argued “if Congress is free to restore material from the public domain at will, then the public’s federal right to copy and use” otherwise public material “may evaporate at any time.”

Several interested parties have filed friend of the court briefs, including Google, the American Library Association and the Motion Picture Association of America.