Law Blog Remembrance: Copyright-Law Author Barbara Ringer

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In 1976, we were more concerned with baseball cards, Bruce Jenner and finding Bicentennial quarters than with intellectual property. But IP folks gurus know that 1976 was a big year; the passage of the Copyright Act of 1976 represented the first major revision in seven decades of a basic law governing intellectual property.

The drafter of that seminal piece of legislation — Barbara Ringer — died last month. And this weekend’s WSJ has a fascinating remembrance of Ringer, who joined the Copyright Office as an examiner on her graduation in 1949, after graduating from Columbia Law School.

According to the story:

The 1976 act was the culmination of more than two decades Ms. Ringer spent negotiating with business, lobbying Congress and drafting provisions. It established an expanded length of copyright (life plus 50 years, changed from 28 years, renewable once), codified the concept of “fair use” and made other key updates in response to technologies such as broadcasting, recording and photocopying.

“Barbara was the heart and soul of that project,” says former U.S. Rep. Robert Kastenmeier, chairman of the House subcommittee that dealt with copyrights.

Despite attempting to bring U.S. copyright law up to date, “the 1976 act was obsolete when passed,” says Jessica Litman, a law professor at Michigan. She adds, “They tried to technology-proof it. But copyright lawyers knew nothing about computers. A word processor was a secretary.”

That said, the basic provisions of copyright protection still follow the structure and strategy of the bill Ringer drafted, legal experts say.

“She was one of the most important contributors to copyright law during the 20th century,” says Pamela Samuelson, a law professor at Berkeley. In addition to updating a U.S. law that had been largely left alone since 1909, the Copyright Act brought the country into line with international standards, paving the way for the U.S. to join the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works in 1989.

Ringer never married, and died on April 9 at 83, with no immediate family surviving. She called herself “the last leaf on the tree.”

• REMEMBRANCES: She Helped Put Her Stamp on Copyright Law