The other two were made by James Madison, who had previously served on a committee of the Congress established under the Articles of Confederation which had encouraged the individual states to adopt copyright legislation.
Madison proposed that the Constitution permit Congress "to secure to literary authors their copyrights for a limited time", or, in the alternative, "to encourage, by proper premiums & Provisions, the advancement of useful knowledge and discoveries".
No record exists to explain the exact choice of words selected by the Committee on Detail, whose task was essentially no more than creating a draft Constitution by arranging the proposals that had been made into the most appropriate language.
"[10][failed verification][better source needed] Petitioners in that case argued that successive retroactive extensions of copyright were functionally unlimited and hence violated the limited times language of the clause.
Justice Ginsburg, writing for the Court, rejected this argument, reasoning that the terms provided by the Act were limited in duration and noted that Congress had a long history of granting retroactive extensions.