Copyright in Concert: Landslide® Magazine Interview with Paul Beck

• Pages: 19-23
• Date: 01 December 2026
• Published date: 01 December 2026
• Author: Christina M. Lucchesi
• Subject Matter: Derecho Constitucional

Published in Landslide, Volume 18, Number 2, 2026. © 2026 by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights

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LANDSLIDE December/January 2026

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A. Martin UW Photography/Moment via Getty Images

Copyright in Concert: Landslide® Magazine Interview with

Paul Beck

Christina M. Lucchesi

In 1994, Congress passed the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA), which implements the Uruguay Round

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), including the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual

Property (TRIPS).1 The URAA reinstated U.S. copyright protection to certain foreign works that had fallen into

the public domain, provided those works were still protected in their country of origin.2 Examples of restored works

include Pablo Picasso’s Guernica, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Lit-

tle Prince, Sergei Prokoev’s Peter and the Wolf, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances, and Jean-Luc Godard’s

Breathless.3

Golan v. Holder Upholds the URAA

In 2011, a coalition of conductors, educators, musicians, archivists, and film distributors challenged the URAA,

arguing that (1) restoring copyright to formerly public domain works violated their constitutional rights to use,

perform, and distribute those works; and (2) the law overreached the scope of copyright powers conferred on

Congress in the copyright clause. The dispute reached the U.S. Supreme Court in Golan v. Holder.4 Lead petitioner

Lawrence Golan—a conductor and violinist—emphasized that the URAA directly affected musicians who had long