Uruguay Round Agreements Act
The Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA; ) is an Act of Congress in the United States that implemented in U.S. law the Marrakesh Agreement of 1994. The Marrakesh 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 foreign works that had previously been in the public domain in the United States. Legislative history 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 . 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. Amendments to