Eldred v. Ashcroft, 537 U.S. 186, 5 (2003)

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190

ELDRED v. ASHCROFT

Syllabus

might be constitutionally infirm. Furthermore, given crucial distinctions between patents and copyrights, one cannot extract from language in the Court's patent decisions—language not trained on a grant's duration—genuine support for petitioners' quid pro quo argument. Patents and copyrights do not entail the same exchange, since immediate disclosure is not the objective of, but is exacted from, the patentee, whereas disclosure is the desired objective of the author seeking copyright protection. Moreover, while copyright gives the holder no monopoly on any knowledge, fact, or idea, the grant of a patent prevents full use by others of the inventor's knowledge. Pp. 210-217.

(3) The "congruence and proportionality" standard of review described in cases evaluating exercises of Congress' power under § 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment has never been applied outside the § 5 context. It does not hold sway for judicial review of legislation enacted, as copyright laws are, pursuant to Article I authorization. Section 5 authorizes Congress to "enforce" commands contained in and incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment. The Copyright Clause, in contrast, empowers Congress to define the scope of the substantive right. See Sony, 464 U. S., at 429. Judicial deference to such congressional definition is "but a corollary to the grant to Congress of any Article I power." Graham v. John Deere Co. of Kansas City, 383 U. S. 1, 6. It would be no more appropriate for this Court to subject the CTEA to "congruence and proportionality" review than it would be to hold the Act unconstitutional per se. Pp. 217-218.

2. The CTEA's extension of existing and future copyrights does not violate the First Amendment. That Amendment and the Copyright Clause were adopted close in time. This proximity indicates the Framers' view that copyright's limited monopolies are compatible with free speech principles. In addition, copyright law contains built-in First Amendment accommodations. See Harper & Row, 471 U. S., at 560. First, 17 U. S. C. § 102(b), which makes only expression, not ideas, eligible for copyright protection, strikes a definitional balance between the First Amendment and copyright law by permitting free communication of facts while still protecting an author's expression. Harper & Row, 471 U. S., at 556. Second, the "fair use" defense codified at § 107 allows the public to use not only facts and ideas contained in a copyrighted work, but also expression itself for limited purposes. "Fair use" thereby affords considerable latitude for scholarship and comment, id., at 560, and even for parody, see Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U. S. 569. The CTEA itself supplements these traditional First Amendment safeguards in two prescriptions: The first allows libraries and similar institutions to reproduce and distribute copies of certain published works for scholarly purposes during the last 20 years of any copyright

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