ALI Copyright Restatement Project

The American Law Institute (ALI) is a century-old independent organization that produces and publishes scholarly works, including “Restatements of the Law,” which are intended to provide guidance to judges by summarizing and advancing uniformity in fundamental state common law principles. ALI has no formal legal authority. However, its Restatements are used frequently by attorneys and cited by judges—and therefore play a significant role in shaping court decisions.

In May 2025, the ALI approved the final sections of its Copyright Restatement, which was a ten-year project that was ultimately marred by the resignation of over a third of the participants just before the final sections were approved. Multiple letters of resignation were sent by groups of prominent copyright scholars, industry professionals, and long-time ALI members. The resignations include the following:

A group of leading copyright professors, including Jane Ginsburg, Shyam Balganesh, David Nimmer, and Peter Menell, who all served as Advisers to the project. Their letter voices dissatisfaction with both the substance of the Restatement and the process by which its sections were approved, explaining that it the final product represents a “revisionist agenda” that cannot be trusted by courts and is “unsuccessful when measured against the very goals of the Restatement.”
The American Bar Association, Intellectual Property Law Section, sent a letter explaining that “to resign reflects our concerns regarding the direction and methodology of the Restatement project” and that “[w]e believe the final Restatement does not present a balanced representation of copyright law and is not aligned with the policies and principles of the ABA-IPL Section.”
The Intellectual Property Law Owners Association (IPO) sent a letter asking for its name and the name of its Liaison to be removed from the Restatement. The letter explains that the “IPO remains concerned that the project has in many places adopted minority interpretations of copyright law without clearly stating the majority rule” and that the Restatement “will be unhelpful and misleading to courts and litigants, leading it to be cited when it is not, in fact, articulating a restatement of existing law.”
A group of 14 industry professionals and copyright experts who served as Advisers and Liaisons to the project. Their letter explains that, throughout the Restatement project, the Reporters routinely disregarded and dismissed concerns and comments put forth by the United States Copyright Office, judges, and many other project participants because they differed from the Reporters’ views or biases about copyright law. As a result, the letter says that the Restatement presents an inaccurate and unbalanced view of copyright law that deviates from the U.S. Copyright Act and judicial precedent. Copyright Alliance CEO Keith Kupferschmid joined the letter and issued this press release.
Professor Marketa Trimble, who participated in the project as part of the Members Consultative Group and submitted a letter asking that her name be removed absent the addition of a disclaimer explaining that the Restatement does not represent the views of all the participants. Her letter states that “the development of the project has been disappointing, considering that many crucial comments, including by the Copyright Office and project Advisers, who are preeminent experts in copyright law, have been discounted or indefensibly rejected.”
Simon Barsky, a life member of the ALI and copyright expert, sent a letter asking for his name to be removed absent a disclaimer or for the Restatement to be converted to a Principles project. His letter explains that the Restatement is an “aspirational rather than accurate statement of the law.”
At least two other Advisers who sent letters of resignation and asked that their names be removed.

The resignations followed numerous concerns that were expressed regarding the project over the years, including:

By then-U.S. Register of Copyrights Karyn Temple, who sent a letter to the ALI in January 2018, in which she wrote that the Institute’s project “appears to create a pseudo-version of the Copyright Act” and urged it to suspend the “misguided” initiative.
By current Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter, whose May 21, 2021 letter to the ALI identifies several problematic areas in the draft Restatement, writing that “the Restatement process to date has been perceived by onlookers, including some Advisers, as inadequately documented, leading to questions being raised about the possible influence of the normative views of the Reporters.”
By numerous members of Congress who sent a letter to the ALI, asking questions and expressing serious concerns about the project, stating that “…courts should rely upon statutory text and legislative history, not [on] Restatements that attempt to replace the statutory language and legislative history established by Congress with novel interpretation.”
By Andrei Iancu, then-Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, who sent a letter to the ALI in 2018 expressing a “fundamental concern about the process and format” of the project and warning that attempting to provide an alternative black letter law for the prescriptive provisions of the Copyright Act would only lead to “confusion and ambiguity” and that the meaning of the federal statute would be “clouded or altered.”
By the American Bar Association (ABA), which sent a 2019 letter to the ALI questioning the direction of the project and the Reporters’ lack of response to numerous commentators’ concerns about the substance of earlier drafts and warning that a “Restatement that focuses not on existing law but on the law as the Reporters would like to see it will be of dubious value and is inconsistent with the restatements that ALI has produced historically.”
By Academics who sent a letter to members of Congress criticizing the Reporters’ approach to the Copyright Restatement, including a lack of methodology, departure from ALI practice by attempting to supplant a federal statute with manufactured “black letter” law, Reporter bias, a number of substantive deficiencies in the text, and the Reporters largely ignoring these critiques.
By numerous representatives of the copyright industries, who have consistently raised concerns with pervasive bias and mischaracterizations of the law in the Restatement that result in a limiting overview of the scope of copyright protection. See here, here, and here.
A Reuters article published on June 8, 2021 stated that “Four well-known copyright scholars urged members of the influential American Law Institute in an email to reject [the] proposed restatement of copyright law when the proposal comes up for a scheduled vote… The scholars – Jane Ginsburg, Shyam Balganesh, Peter Menell, and David Nimmer – told ALI members … [that the] copyright restatement … marks the first time that ALI has proposed a restatement in an area of law governed by a federal statute … We believe that the unprecedented nature of the project — a ‘restatement’ of a comprehensive federal statute that does not take the statute as its black letter starting point — raises significant concerns about the ALI’s reputation and legitimacy…”

Despite this chorus of opposition and concern, the ALI instead chose to manufacture its own version of the law that is often confusing and presents an incomplete and inaccurate statement of copyright law.

Additional letters, statements, blogs, opinion pieces and media coverage regarding the Copyright Restatement Project can be found directly below: