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appetite is voracious for US origin products, there are many factors which could contribute to the economic dominance in intellectual properties One could envision that the economic dominance is partly attributable to the US preeminance in marketing strategies It could also be imagined that another factor supporting the economic advantage of US over the EU is the world-renowned bi-lingual capabilities of the Europeans, and the equally renowned linguistic limitations of the U.S. public. Imputing the economic dominance of the US. solely to its copyright laws is an inadequate basis on which to justify maintenance of the status quo.
The US Copyright Act cannot be cited as the source of incentive to create some of the very products that led to US economic dominance—films and computer software. The protectability of computer software under copyright law was not an established fact during the period in which software was originally invented Although the Copyright Office granted registrations for computer software as early as 1964, the validity of those registrations was only definitively decided by the courts in the eariy 1980s '" Similarly, the applicability of the Copyright Act to films was not established until the 1970s.'^^ Thus, the early pioneers in the software and film industries could not be said to have been molivaledby the Copyright Act Therefore, the argument that US economic dominance in intellectual properties markets is a result of the Copyright Act is questionable. Furthermore, because the Extension Act will increase the term of protection for U.S. works abroad, the US economic dominance is protected
Further, it is risky to justify maintenance of the status quo by demonstrating the economic, but not qualitative, preeminance of US copyright industries over EU copyright industries. It has not been established that the US has a positive trade balance in fine art and literature, nor could it be argued that the US qualitatively produces artistic works of superior quality or diversity The Constitution did not define "promoting the progress of science and the useful arts" as maximizing the US balance of trade If any Constitutional support can be found for that argument, it would be under the Commerce Clause '^*
Nonetheless, the US. trade surplus in copyright-based products is an important consideration The Act protects that surplus by resulting in 20 years longer protection in both the U.S. — and the EU This extended term results in longer royalty streams to the U.S. for all US copyright-based products, such as films and music, for which copyright terms may be soon to expire, and computer software, for which profitable copyright terms
122 1 NiMMER, supra note 15 at § 2 04|C1. p 2-52 3. 123Mat§2.091D].p 2-157 '24/rf at § 2 041CI, p 2-52 3
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