Intellectual Pro Subcommittee on Courts

U.s. Copyright Office Intellectual Pro Subcommittee on Courts

Publisher Marketing: Within Congress, the Judiciary Committee is responsible for overseeing and legislating on matters that derive from or are substantially affected by the Constitution's grant of authority under Article 1, Section 8, Intellectual Property Clause. In the context of today's hearing, there are two points I want to make regarding this authority. First, the Constitution's drafters didn't merely give Congress the authority to grant exclusive rights to authors and inventors; they gave the Congress the responsibility to execute it by literally prescribing the means of securing these exclusive rights. Secondly, since the 19th century, the Congress has sought to administer and secure these rights through a design that has largely been left unchanged, a statutorily created Copyright Office housed in the Library of Congress. Today's hearing will focus on the operations of the U. S. Copyright Office. In doing so, we will not merely gaze backwards to assess how the Office has constructed its business in recent years. We will look forward and begin to examine the more difficult and substantial questions of whether we are equipping the Office to succeed and ask what steps we need to take to position it to promote the interests of authors and the public and perform its statutory responsibilities in the 21st century.