copyright 1995 David A. Einhorn and Laurie Epstein; Anderson Kill Olick & Oshinsky , New York, New York, U.S.A.
On December 8, 1994, President Clinton signed the "Uruguay Round Agreements Act" (URAA) to implement the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Section 514 of the URAA restores copyrights in certain foreign works that have fallen into the public domain in the United States but not in the source country. The United States hopes that granting copyright restoration for foreign works will encourage an improvement in protection for U.S works abroad. The copyright restoration provisions, effective January 1, 1996, restore copyright protection to authors of previously copyrighted works domiciled in countries other than the U.S. which are members of the Berne Convention, members of the World Trade Organization (WTO), or are parties to presidential proclamations that extend copyright restoration to works of that country based on reciprocal treatment to the works of U.S. nationals or domiciliaries.
Since copyrights in eligible foreign works are restored automatically from the effective date of the restoration provision, January 1, 1996, the owner of the restored copyright is not required to obtain such restoration. To qualify for restoration, a work must be an original work of authorship that has not fallen into the public domain in its source country through expiration of its term of protection and which has entered the public domain in the United States because of noncompliance with formalities.
Additionally, at the time the work was created, at least one author must have been a national or domiciliary of an eligible country. For published works to be restored, they must not have been published in the United States within 30 days of their first publication in the eligible country.
A primary concern regarding restoration is the effect on third parties of restoring copyrights to works which are already in the public domain. Foreign works which are currently in the public domain in the United States may be actively and legally exploited by U.S. citizens and companies. The URAA refers to the businesses and individuals using such works in the United States as "reliance parties". Although these reliance parties are immunized for their acts prior to the date of automatic copyright restoration, they must stop reproducing any work in which a copyright is restored upon effective notice and must not prepare new derivative works that reproduce significant elements of such work.
In order to provide such effective notice, owners of restored copyrights may either file a notice of intent to enforce with the Copyright Office, or they may serve actual notice on a particular reliance party. Owners of restored copyrights may begin filing notices of intent as of January 1, 1996, and no mandated deadline for filing has been discussed. Reliance parties, after receiving notice either by publication in the Federal Register or by actual notice, have a 12-month grace period to sell off previously manufactured stock, to publicly perform or display the work, or to authorize others to conduct these activities.