The Uruguay Round Agreements Act, or URAA, is an American law that restored copyrights in the United States on foreign works if those works were still copyrighted in the foreign source country on the URAA date. This URAA date was 1 January 1996 for most countries. This means that foreign works became copyrighted in the U.S. even if they had been in the public domain in the U.S. before the URAA date. See also Wikipedia:Non-U.S. copyrights.
Because the constitutionality of this law was challenged in court, Commons initially permitted users to upload images that would have been public domain in the U.S. but for the URAA. However, the constitutionality of the URAA was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Golan v. Holder. After discussion, it was determined that the affected files would not be deleted en masse. There was further discussion about the best method for review of affected files, resulting in the creation of Commons:WikiProject Public Domain. See Commons:WikiProject Public Domain/URAA review.
Following a discussion at Commons:Massive restoration of deleted images by the URAA and a subsequent unsuccessful review of the precautionary principle, it was decided that files nominated for deletion due to the URAA should be evaluated carefully, as should be their copyright status under U.S. and local laws. A mere allegation that the URAA applies to a file cannot be the sole reason for deletion. If the end result of copyright evaluation is that there is significant doubt about the freedom of a file under U.S. or local law, the file must be deleted in line with the precautionary principle.
Tests to check whether the URAA restored copyright.
If the answer to either of these questions is NO, then the URAA does not restore US copyright to foreign works. Otherwise, it does, unless one of the rare exceptions below is met.
Exceptions where copyright is not restored. (If you can't show an exception applies, assume it doesn't.)
The US Copyright Office says:[3]
Normally, no: the URAA link is an exception. The US does not have the rule of the shorter term; the US copyright status of a work is normally entirely separate from its copyright status elsewhere. Works may be PD in the US, but in copyright in their source country, or vice versa.
No, not necessarily - even foreign works may have satisfied all the necessary US formalities to stay in copyright in the US (independently of whether it's still in copyright in the source country). The URAA is intended to cover foreign works that did not satisfy all the necessary US formalities (or where there was no treaty). See Commons:Subsisting copyright/pl.
No:
All other foreign works have their US copyright restored (according to US rules) if they were still in copyright in the source country (according to source country rules) on the relevant URAA date.
Enforcement of copyright is rare in general due to the cost of filing suit, and many heirs are unaware that they have rights under the URAA in the US. Nevertheless, this has occurred; see Commons:Deletion requests/File:Beit Alpha 1933.jpg. In this case the heir of an Israel author claims rights to a US copyright even after the work had expired in Israel (in this case the US copyright was probably due to recent first publication rather than the URAA, but the principle is the same). The precautionary principle does not permit us to make assumptions about whether copyright holders are likely to enforce their rights—as long as a copyright holder exists and is capable in principle of enforcing their rights, we must either obtain a free license from them or be conservative and exclude the work.
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