Flo & Eddie 2, SiriusXM 1
Florida Grants Summary Judgment to Sirius on pre-1972 sound recordings

The Southern District of Florida has granted summary judgment to SiriusXM on Flo & Eddie’s claims that Sirius infringed Flo & Eddie’s public performance rights under Florida state law by streaming pre-1972 sound recordings. Although Flo & Eddie have prevailed in the trial courts in the Southern District of New York and Central District of California on nearly identical claims, the court found that “Florida is different” because, unlike California and New York, the state has no statutory or decisional law recognizing public performance rights in pre-1972 sound recordings. The New York case is currently on interlocutory appeal to the Second Circuit on the merits, whereas the California case is likewise on appeal, but on the issue of the court’s grant of class certification following a summary judgment ruling in favor of Flo & Eddie. Flo & Eddie will no doubt appeal the Florida ruling to the Eleventh Circuit.

From “Happy Together” to “Eve of Destruction”
Turtles Seek to Upend Streaming Business Models for Pre-1972 Sound Recordings

On Friday I had the privilege of speaking at the AIPLA Spring Meeting in Los Angeles on the subject of pre-1972 sound recordings and the current series of lawsuits brought by the successors of the Turtles against Sirius XM regarding royalties over pre-1972 sound recordings.  Copyright law in the United States is almost exclusively governed by the federal Copyright Act, which preempts equivalent state laws.   As originally drafted, however, federal copyright law did not extend copyright protection to sound recordings, leaving those works to be regulated by the states.  Congress amended the copyright law in 1972 to add federal protection for sound recordings, but it granted this protection on a prospective basis only.  Sound recordings fixed before February 15, 1972 thus remain subject to state law. A series of lawsuits brought by Flo & Eddie, Inc. (“Flo & Eddie”), the entity that owns the copyrights for sound recordings created by the 1960s rock group the Turtles, is upending rules thought long established regarding performance rights of pre-1972 sound recordings under state law. Continue reading »

Pandora’s Box:
Turtles Actions Threaten to Upend Music Streaming Models

Copyright law in the United States is almost exclusively governed by the federal Copyright Act, which preempts equivalent state laws.  As originally drafted, however, the Copyright Act of 1976 – the current iteration of the Act – made an exception for sound recordings fixed before February 15, 1972, leaving those works to be regulated by the states.   State law thus applies to determine the rights and remedies available to the copyright owner of pre-1972 sound recordings. Continue reading »

Eldred Conquers Golan’s Heights
Supreme Court Upholds Copyright Restoration

Last week, the Supreme Court issued its eagerly awaited ruling in Golan v. Holder, holding that Congress acted within its authority in passing legislation that restored copyright in certain foreign works that were previously in the public domain in the United States.  The Court found that its earlier opinion in Eldred v. Ashcroft largely disposed of the petitioners’ claims.  Though reactions to the case seemed muted in contrast to the raging debate over SOPA – which initially overshadowed news of the opinion – it is an important opinion with significant ramifications for those who use content in the public domain. Continue reading »

Golan’s Heights
Supremes to Hear Constitutional Challenge to Copyright Restoration

On March 7, the Supreme Court granted cert. in Golan v. Holder, taking up the question whether Congress violated the First Amendment when it granted copyright protection to certain foreign works that were previously in the public domain in the United States. The case stems from Section 514 of the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (“URAA”), enacted in 1994 and codified as Sections 104A and 109 of the Copyright Act. Congress passed these provisions to bring the United States into compliance with preexisting international treaty obligations under the Berne Convention, which the United States joined in 1989.

Among other things, the Berne Convention requires its adherents to provide foreign authors with the same degree of copyright protection that they accord to their own nationals. Article 18 of the Berne Conventionrequires joining members to provide copyright protection to foreign works even if those works were previously in the public domain in the joining country. The United States, however, never passed legislation implementing this aspect of Berne.

In 1994, in connection with the Uruguay Round General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the United States signed the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs). TRIPs required its signatories to comply with Article 18 of the Berne Convention. Accordingly, the United States enacted Section 514 of the URAA, restoring copyrights in foreign works that had entered the public domain in the United States for any one of three reasons: a failure to comply with formalities (such as placing a copyright notice on published copies of a work); lack of subject matter protection; or lack of national eligibility. Section 514 did not restore copyrights in works whose copyright term had expired.

Clawing these works back from the public domain raised an obvious problem for members of the public who, relying on the fact that the subject works had entered the public domain, were making various uses of those works. One of the Golan plaintiffs, for example, created a derivative work sound recording based on several compositions by Shostakovich which had previously fallen into the public domain in the United States. To address this problem, Section 514 implemented certain protections for “reliance parties,” defined as parties who had exploited or created derivative works based on foreign public-domain works prior to restoration. Section 514 granted reliance parties who exploited foreign public-domain works a 12-month grace period, starting from receipt of notice of restoration from the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of copies of restored works. Furthermore, Section 514 authorized reliance parties who created derivative works based on restored works to continue exploiting those derivative works upon payment of “reasonable compensation” to the owner of the restored work (also upon receipt of notice of restoration).

The Golan plaintiffs – musicians, performers, educators and other creators – sued because they had exploited foreign works previously in the public domain and, after enactment of the URAA, were either prohibited from continuing to exploit those works or were required to pay cost-prohibitive licensing fees to the restored copyright holders. They argued that the removal of works from the public domain hampered their free speech rights and consequently violated the First Amendment of the Constitution. The District Court agreed and held the statute invalid.

On appeal, the Tenth Circuit reversed. As a threshold matter, the court addressed whether it should subject the statute to heightened scrutiny under the First Amendment. The court found no evidence that the government enacted the statute because of agreement or disagreement with a particular message. To the contrary, Congress passed the law to comply with international obligations and to protect the rights of American authors abroad. Thus, the court found the statute to be a content-neutral regulation subject to “intermediate scrutiny.” Under this test, courts uphold legislation if it (1) advances important governmental interests unrelated to the suppression of free speech and (2) does not burden substantially more speech than necessary to further those interests.

The Tenth Circuit found that the government had demonstrated a substantial interest in protecting American copyright holders’ interests abroad, because “[s]ecuring foreign copyrights for American works preserves the authors’ economic and expressive interests.” The United States’ failure to restore foreign copyrights following its adherence to Berne harmed those interests because other countries were following suit and refusing to restore copyright in American works. Though Section 514’s restoration of foreign copyrights does not guarantee that other countries will reciprocate, the Tenth Circuit reasoned that it owed Congress considerable deference in an area involving foreign relations, and concluded that substantial evidence supported Congress’s judgment.

The court also found that the “burdens imposed on the reliance parties are congruent with the benefits” of restoration. The “United States needed to impose the same burden on American reliance parties that it sought to impose on foreign reliance parties. . . . The burdens on speech are therefore directly focused to the harms that the government sought to alleviate.” As a result, Section 514 was narrowly tailored to achieve its goals. The court rejected the plaintiffs’ argument that Congress could have employed less restrictive means consistent with Berne’s requirements. Though a statute must be “narrowly tailored to serve the government’s legitimate, content-neutral interest,” it “need not be the least restrictive” means of doing so. Thus, the availability of other options to protect reliance parties’ interests did not alter the statute’s viability.

A look back at Eldred v. Ashcroft suggests that the Supreme Court may disagree with the Tenth Circuit’s application of intermediate scrutiny to Section 514. In Eldred, the plaintiffs sought to invalidate the Copyright Term Extension Act (“CTEA”), which increased the term of copyright from 50 years after the author’s death to 70 years after the author’s death. The Eldred plaintiffs argued that the CTEA was a content-neutral regulation of speech subject to heightened judicial review. In her majority opinion, however, Justice Ginsburg rejected the “imposition of uncommonly strict scrutiny on a copyright scheme that incorporates its own speech-protective purposes and safeguards,” finding that “copyright law contains built-in First Amendment accommodations” such as the idea-expression dichotomy and the fair use doctrine. The Court went on to hold that the “First Amendment securely protects the freedom to make–or decline to make–one’s own speech; it bears less heavily when speakers assert the right to make other people’s speeches. To the extent such assertions raise First Amendment concerns, copyright’s built-in free speech safeguards are generally adequate to address them.” Of course, three of the Justices who joined in that majority opinion – Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice O’Connor and Justice Souter – have since retired.

The Surpreme Court is expected to hear Golan in its next term, which begins in October, 2011. I will post briefs as they are filed. In the meantime, the parties’ Tenth Circuit briefs are posted below.

Opening Brief for the Appellants/Cross-Appellees

Opening and Response Brief for the Appellees/Cross-Appellants

Combined Reply and Responsive Brief for the Appellants/Cross-Appellees

Reply Brief for the Appellees/Cross-Appellants