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)

212 Mr. GOODLATTE. Thank you, Ambassador. Commissioner Lehman, welcome. STATEMENT OF BRUCE A. LEHMAN, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF COMMERCE AND COMMISSIONER OF PATENTS AND TRADEMARKS Mr. Lehman. Thank you very much, Mr. Goodlatte. In the interest of efficiency and since I know that everyone has a lot of other things to do today — I will attempt to be extremely brief, particularly in view of the fact that this is not really a complicated subject. I would like to begin by apologizing for the Administration getting its testimony to the subcommittee so late. However, it seems as if we were all on the same wave length an3rway. In fact, if Government works were cop3n'ighted, the administration's opening statement might be an infringement of the chairman's opening statement. [Laughter.] So it's quite clear that he understands what the issues are, and I think that the other members of the committee do too. I think you will find unanimity among the three witnesses that the principal reason for making this change is that it will enable us to harmonize with the European Union, our largest single market for copyrighted works outside the United States. In fact, in some cases it might even be larger than the United States. The Register of Copyrights, Ms. Peters, was correct when she suggested that this legislation would have an immediate impact, a very nearterm impact, on works between 1920 and 1940. If we just think a little bit about that period of time, that was a period in which America's copyright industries really came into global dominance. There is a great deal of material that will have great commercial value on an international scale. I think it is fair to say that, with the passage of this legislation, there will be considerable revenue flowing into the United States because of the capacity to continue to exploit these works. Now that does have an impact on creativity in the United States because much commercial creation — in fact, almost all commercial creation — is funded by commercial enterprises. This day and age of the information superhighway, and so on, it requires considerable financial resources to get product out to the public, particularly on the global scale. The extension of the copyright term will provide commercial copyright-based industries with the capacity to do that. In the course of considering this legislation within the administration, we considered a number of very specific cases. We had some experience with this because we restored cop3rright protection to some works that had fallen into the public domain as a part of a NAFTA implementing legislation. There is some evidence, that the restoration of copyright protection under the NAFTA legislation actually encouraged industry to make available to the public in new editions, and much finer editions, works which otherwise would have remained moldering in the library. So on balance, we agree that there is a great deal of merit in this legislation. I'd just like to say a word about the concern that works will not go into the public domain. Obviously, that's always a concern, but there's very little evidence that as a practical matter that will work a hardship on Americans or American industry in any way. In fact,