Again, an issue which straddles the borders of eCommerce and intellectual property. The Supreme Court of the US has that the "copyright clause" in the US constitution does not exclude the application of copyright protection to works in the public domain. In other words, works which are without copyright restrictions (whether through ineligibility at the time of creation, or else through expiry of the period of protection) can be brought back under the copyright regime by subsequent legal acts, even though this results in the deprivation of the public domain.
Given the Eldred decision — which has a clear discussion of the economic / ecommerce impact of retrospective term extension — I am not wholly surprised with the ruling here, but I am disappointed all the same, given the immense value of a vibrant public domain. The decision is available here
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