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Stevens, J., dissenting
tomorrow's work. The 1976 Act's time extensions, which set the pattern that the CTEA followed, would be vulnerable as well.
As we read the Framers' instruction, the Copyright Clause empowers Congress to determine the intellectual property regimes that, overall, in that body's judgment, will serve the ends of the Clause. See Graham, 383 U. S., at 6 (Congress may "implement the stated purpose of the Framers by selecting the policy which in its judgment best effectuates the constitutional aim." (emphasis added)). Beneath the facade of their inventive constitutional interpretation, petitioners forcefully urge that Congress pursued very bad policy in prescribing the CTEA's long terms. The wisdom of Congress' action, however, is not within our province to second-guess. Satisfied that the legislation before us remains inside the domain the Constitution assigns to the First Branch, we affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.
It is so ordered.
Justice Stevens, dissenting.
Writing for a unanimous Court in 1964, Justice Black stated that it is obvious that a State could not "extend the life of a patent beyond its expiration date," Sears, Roebuck & Co. v. Stiffel Co., 376 U. S. 225, 231 (1964).1 As I shall explain, the reasons why a State may not extend the life of a patent apply to Congress as well. If Congress may not expand the scope of a patent monopoly, it also may not extend
1 Justice Harlan wrote a brief concurrence, but did not disagree with this statement. Justice Black's statement echoed a portion of Attorney General Wirt's argument in Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 171 (1824): "The law of Congress declares, that all inventors of useful improvements throughout the United States, shall be entitled to the exclusive right in their discoveries for fourteen years only. The law of New-York declares, that this inventor shall be entitled to the exclusive use of his discovery for thirty years, and as much longer as the State shall permit. The law of Congress, by limiting the exclusive right to fourteen years, in effect declares, that after the expiration of that time, the discovery shall be the common right of the whole people of the United States."
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