The stakes in Golan v. Holder were high. Free speech rights, Congress’ power to grant copyright protection and America’s treaty obligations were all on the line.
Moreover, the case would determine the legal status of millions of works created in the 20th century by foreign authors. Among those works were well-known creations by Pablo Picasso, J.R.R. Tolkien, Igor Stravinsky, Alfred Hitchcock, H.G. Wells, M.C. Escher, Virginia Woolf, Federico Fellini and Sergei Rachmaninoff. These works were protected in the authors’ home countries, but not in the U.S.—
until Congress passed the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) in 1994.
