Uruguay Round Agreements Act

Uruguay Round Agreements Act

Other short titles	General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
Long title	An Act to approve and implement the trade agreements concluded in the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations.
Acronyms (colloquial)	URAA
Enacted by	the 103rd United States Congress
Effective	December 8, 1994
Citations
Public law	103-465
Statutes at Large	108 Stat. 4809
Codification
Titles amended	19 U.S.C.: Customs Duties
U.S.C. sections created	19 U.S.C. ch. 22 §§ 3501, 3511–3556, 3571–3572, 3581–3592, 3601–3624
Legislative history
Introduced in the House as H.R. 5110 by Richard Gephardt (D-MO) on September 27, 1994 Committee consideration by House Ways and Means, House Agriculture, House Education and Labor, House Energy and Commerce, House Foreign Affairs, House Government Operations, House Judiciary, House Rules Passed the House on November 29, 1994 (288-146, Roll call vote 507, via Clerk.House.gov) Passed the Senate on December 1, 1994 (76-24, Roll call vote 329, via Senate.gov) Signed into law by President William J. Clinton on December 8, 1994

The Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA; Pub.L. 103–465, 108 Stat. 4809, enacted December 8, 1994) is an Act of Congress in the United States that implemented in U.S. law the Marrakesh Agreement of 1994. The Marrakech Agreement was part of the Uruguay Round of negotiations which transformed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) into the World Trade Organization (WTO). One of its effects is to give United States copyright protection to some works that had previously been in the public domain in the United States.

U.S. President Bill Clinton sent the bill for the URAA to Congress on September 27, 1994, where it was introduced in the House of Representatives as H.R. 5110 and in the Senate as S. 2467. The bill was submitted under special fast-track procedures under which neither chamber could modify it. The House passed the bill on November 29, 1994; the Senate did so on December 1, 1994. President Clinton signed it into law on December 8, 1994 as Pub.L. 103–465. The URAA became effective on January 1, 1995. A number of technical corrections were made to the copyright provisions introduced by the URAA through the Copyright Technical Amendments Act (H.R. 672, which became Pub. L. 105-80) in 1997.

Title V of the URAA made several modifications to the Copyright law of the United States. It amended Title 17 ("Copyrights") of the United States Code to include a completely reworded article 104A on copyright restorations on foreign works and to include a new chapter 11, containing a prohibition of bootleg sound and video recordings of live performances. In Title 18 of the U.S. Code, a new article 2319A was inserted, detailing the penal measures against infringements of this new bootlegging prohibition.

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