Are There Copyrights on Supreme Court Opinions ? Is It Legal to Copy Supreme Court Opinions ? In Wheaton and Donaldson v. Peters and Grigg (1834) 33 U.S. 591, in an action for infringement of a copyright on Wheaton's volumes of Supreme Court opinions, the Court observed: "The Court are unanimously of the opinion, that no reporter has or can have any copyright in the written opinions delivered by this Court; and that the judges thereof cannot confer on any reporter any such right." (Id., at 668.) The Supreme Court interpreted the words "by securing" in the IP clause to mean that the Constitution gave Congress the power to create a new right through the 1790 Act. (Id. at 662.) The Court explained that "securing" had to refer to the creation of a new right, since the Constitution includes both copyright and patent law in the same clause, and patent law had no existing common law equivalent in England (Id. at 661.) The Court further reasoned that any other interpretation would render the IP clause mere surplusage because the result would be a "vesting of a right already vested." Id. Thus, "Congress, . . . by the 1790 Act, instead of sanctioning an existing right, created it." (Id.) Because not every state had a copyright statute and because no common law right to copyright existed, the plaintiffs' argument that the 1790 Act merely codified existing common law fails. (Id.) The Court said: "It is clear, there can be no common law of the United States. When, therefore, a common-law right is asserted, we must look to the state in which the controversy originated." The Court ruled that before enactment of the 1790 Act, common-law copyright protection expired upon first publication. (Id., at 657, 663.) The Court unanimously held that "no reporter has or can have any copyright in the written opinions delivered by this Court; and that the judges thereof cannot confer on any reporter any such right." (Id. at 668.) The Court was interpreting the Copyright Act of 1790, but it did not explain the foundations for the rule that "the law" was excluded from copyright protection. (See id. at 593.)