The Solicitor General would consult multiple agencies for copyright.

To take a more institutional view of the role, the Solicitor General should consider consulting more broadly within the government when copyright issues are before the Court. It is, of course, understandable that OSG lawyers would listen closely to and heed the views expressed by lawyers from the Copyright Office with deep expertise in copyright law. But perhaps OSG should consider giving less weight to those views, given that the Court has so often rejected them in the substantive interpretation cases. Depending on the kind of case before the Court, lawyers or officials from the Federal Trade Commission, Federal Communications Commission, the Antitrust Division, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Council of Economic Advisors, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Education, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Smithsonian museums, and the Librarian of Congress, among others, may have different perspectives than the Copyright Office, the USPTO, USTR, and IPEC. While OSG routinely solicits views from multiple agencies, perhaps it should make more concerted efforts to understand how the Court’s resolution of copyright disputes will affect the broader publics served by various agencies and not just the views of IP agencies.