Regular readers of this column may recall that it has twice reported on constitutional attacks to Section 104A of the Copyright Act, a provision that restored the copyright in many previously public-domain works of foreign origin. The subject of both columns was a case now known as Golan v. Holder,1 which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has recently (June 21, 2010) reversed for a second time.
On the case’s first trip to the Tenth Circuit, the opinion prompted many to conclude that the court would ultimately strike down the statute upon First Amendment review, as we discussed in our Nov. 16, 2007, column (“Tenth Circuit Revisits Copyright and the First Amendment“). After a remand to the District of Colorado produced exactly that result, as described in our May 15, 2009, column (“Constitutional Crossroads“), the statute’s chances for survival looked even bleaker.
