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)

355 Mr. MOORHEAD. Professor Reichman. STATEMENT OF J.H. REICHMAN, PROFESSOR OF LAW, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY Mr. Reichman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for Mr. MoORHEAD. Am I pronouncing your name Mr. Reichman. Reichman. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to appear again before your committee. Let me begin by emphasizing that with respect to duration, current U.S. copyright law compHes with all the international minimum standards, both those in the Berne Convention and those that issued from the all important TRIPS Agreement, which has not been mentioned here today. So if we move to a term of life-plus70 years, that would exceed the mandated international standard. Now, I want to talk technically for a moment about the works made for hire problem because I agree with Bill Patry; it's much more complicated than appeared in this morning's testimony. There is no express minimum standard for works made for hire under the Berne Convention. But let me stress here, because I did not make this point strongly enough in my written statement, that article 12 of the TRIPS Agreement does establish a basic minimum standard of 50 years for copyrightable works that are treated as corporate creations in the domestic laws of member States. Article 12, would include both computer programs and original compilations. Now, then, the TRIPS Agreement goes on to establish a minimum 50-year term for producers of sound recordings, but only 20 years for television broadcasts. So, except for broadcasts, the trend clearly favors the minimum term of 50 years for most corporate productions, whether they are treated under copyright laws, as we do, or under neighboring rights law, related rights laws, that the Europeans use. So the United States already exceeds this minimum, the new, emerging standard of 50 years, by giving 75 years of protection to all works made for hire. Now what has the European directive done? First, it adopts a basic term of life-plus-70 years which Germany and France, to a lesser extent, had reached in a somewhat haphazard fashion. It does this to quickly integrate their national markets at lower transaction cost and with fewer trade restraints than would be the case if they were to respect acquired rights under a life-plus-70 formula in those countries while otherwise implementing a life-plus50 term everywhere else. Then, in effect, the European Union meets the minimum term of 50 years under TRIPS by giving it to all the related rights holders, including broadcast organizations, which it didn't need to do, film producers, sound recording producers, as well as the corporate creators of computer programs. More interesting, the directive has also established an ambiguous, catch-all category for works attributed to legal persons under the domestic copyright laws, and these works will obtain 70 years of protection. Now I really do not know how this provision will be applied. I hope the drafters had in mind works made for hire originating in the Netherlands, which is one of the few European countries that has a true works-made-for-hire principle. If they did, then those works from the Netherlands would