Goldstein v. California
United States Supreme Court
412 U.S. 546 (1973)
Goldstein and others (defendants) ran an unauthorized recording-duplication operation, pirating musical recordings for retail sale in violation of a California statute prohibiting unauthorized copying of recorded performances for sale, which effectively granted an indefinite state copyright over such recordings; federal copyright law under the then-governing Copyright Act of 1909 did not address sound recordings at all. The defendants argued the state law was preempted by the federal Copyright Clause and Supremacy Clause; the district court and court of appeals rejected that argument.
Whether a state law violates the Supremacy Clause by granting copyright protection to a class of works not addressed by federal copyright legislation.