Copyright term, film labeling, and film preservation legislation : hearings before the Subcommittee on Courts and Intellectual Property of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, One Hundred Fourth Congress, first session, on H.R. 989, H.R. 1248, and H.R. 1734 ... June 1 and July 13, 1995 (1996)

410 Rodgers and Hammerstein. You may recall all their successes. Their investors know the two and three times in a row when they failed. The copyright monopoly makes this type of investment possible by insuring that free riders cannot come in and reduce the lead time of the investor to zero by simply copying the product that succeeds. Remember, there's no trade secret law available in copyright. What you see is what you get. You can't keep anything back. So you artificially manufacture this market by granting exclusive rights to intangible creations, a market that wouldn't otherwise exist. All I'm suggesting is that in manufacturing it, you have a burden to the public that you don't have with respect to tangible property, where everyone takes care of themselves. Mr. MOORHEAD. Well, what do you do in a situation like you buy a Picasso when Picasso was young and you get it for $1,000, and Picasso becomes famous and eventually dies, but you bought it for $1,000. You own the copyright on that figure that you bought, but then 50 years later you say, hey, I can make some money on this by putting out copies, duplicate copies of this. You have the copyright; you can do it. But your argument falls flat on its face if you're going to let them do that. You'd refer it back to the family of Picasso. Mr. Reichman. I expect that sooner or later we're going to be in a hearing to talk about that. In Europe they have a right called the droit de suite which allows Mr. MoORHEAD. Well, I know they do and that's why I brought the point up. Mr. Reichman. That's a very interesting concept. I personally am not prepared to speak in favor or against a droit de suite today, but I think your point is very well taken, that it raises the kinds of things we're talking about, equitable considerations. And in California, I'm sure you know that that you have droit de suite resale royalties for this purpose: that is, to help painters receive a share of the added value from the resale of their works over time. And I think that that point is fully consistent with Bill Patr/s points about the need to protect Mr. Patry. Mr. Chairman, if I could respond — ^that's not the law in the United States, as you know. The situation you're talking about doesn't occur here. If somebody buys a Picasso, they don't buy the copyright; they buy the physical object. And if the value of the physical object goes up, that's the way it goes for Picasso, but that's not what we're talking about here. What we're talking about here is the copyright and we're talking about Congress giving new property to somebody that didn't exist at the time the contract was signed. The question is, who's going to get the benefits? I just don't understand Mr. MooRHEAD. Well, it's still property. You own a motion picture. You own whatever it is you own that you have bought. It's still property. Mr. Patry. Well, that's true; you can buy the copyright. And when you bought it in the past, you negotiated for 56 years. We now have a market in 1995. Congress is going to give 20 more years for that market. The question is, are you going to let authors sit down at the table and negotiate for what the value is worth in 1995 or not? Or are you going to let the person who bought the