Copyright’s Modest Ontology—Theory and Pragmatism inEldred v. Ashcroft

Abstract

Focusing on the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, Eldred v. Ashcroft, which held that the U.S. Congress acted constitutionally when it extended copyright terms by twenty years, this article argues that copyright law in the United States for the most part responds to pragmatic imperatives. The article examines the theoretic/pragmatic distinction at an institutional level and argues that intellectual property lawmaking is at its most pragmatic in the legislative realm. While there is greater potential for theoretical concerns to influence intellectual property law-making in the judicial review context, in Eldred v. Ashcroft, the Court declined to allow grand intellectual property theories to dictate the freedom Congress enjoys to craft copyright legislation in the light of its rational view of the best (pragmatic) cultural and economic policies. The article concludes that in Eldred v. Ashcroft there can be detected an ontological approach to the “Copyright Clause” in the U.S. Constitution. The Court’s role is to ensure that Congress acts consistently with what copyright “is”; that is, a vehicle for motivating the “creative spark” of authorship. Congress has relatively free rein to determine what copyright should “do”. Moreover, any limitations on what copyright is meant to achieve are certainly not to be determined by theoretical concerns. Even the Court’s ontological approach to copyright law should be regarded as “modest,” however, given the Court’s general deference to the policy and cultural choices legislators make in the copyright field.