Statements

Authors Guild Condemns Purported Firing of Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter (Updated With Petition)

Copyright

May 13, 2025

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Update, May 14, 2025: We have drafted a petition urging Congress to stop this power grab and restore Register Perlmutter to her position. Add your name here.

May 13, 2025: The Authors Guild is deeply troubled by the Trump Administration’s unprecedented and unlawful firing of Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter, just two days after the firing of Carla Hayden, the Librarian of Congress. This extraordinary action represents a transparent attempt by the White House to interfere in the operations of a nonpartisan Legislative Branch agency charged with providing impartial expert advice on copyright law to Congress.

Register Perlmutter has been a truly outstanding public servant, ably guiding the Copyright Office through a period of rapid and unprecedented change in the creative and technological ecosystems. She has been a model of an impartial, nonpartisan government expert, and Congress, the copyright community, and the country as a whole will be worse off for her departure.

Well-known as a brilliant copyright scholar and lawyer, Perlmutter had a stellar career in copyright law before coming to the Copyright Office. Starting at a copyright law boutique after law school, from 1990 through 1995, Perlmutter was a law professor at the Catholic University of America, teaching copyright, trademark, unfair competition, and international intellectual property law. While on the faculty, she was the copyright consultant to the Clinton Administration’s Advisory Council on the National Information Infrastructure. She then moved to the Copyright Office as a senior advisor then to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), where she worked on WIPO’s treaties on copyright and the internet. She later held the position of executive vice president for global legal policy at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and prior to that was vice president and associate general counsel for intellectual property policy at Time Warner. Most recently, she served as chief policy officer and director for international affairs at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Perlmutter also published many articles on copyright law and co-authored a leading casebook on international intellectual property law and policy.

Today, in her place, the administration (again with no authority) appointed Paul Perkins, a Department of Justice attorney with no apparent copyright expertise. It is unclear how he will lead an office of copyright experts who have devoted their careers to copyright law. Prior Registers have come to the position usually after decades of copyright law experience.

Ms. Perlmutter’s firing was not only unjustified and ill-considered, but it is an unconstitutional abuse of power, outside the Executive branch’s authority. By statute, the Copyright Office sits within the Library of Congress and is part of the Legislative—not the Executive—branch. The Librarian of Congress appoints the Register, who is specifically directed under the law to “[a]dvise Congress on national and international issues relating to copyright” (emphasis added).

Per Article One of the Constitution, Congress has the sole power to legislate copyright law. The House Administration Committee and Senate Rules Committee oversee the Library of Congress and the Copyright Office within it, and the Judiciary Committees in both houses work closely with the Register and the Office, as copyright law comes under their jurisdiction. Leaders of these committees are traditionally consulted when appointing a new Register. As of this writing, it appears that no members of Congress were consulted.

As Representative Joe Morelle of New York, the Ranking Democrat on the Committee on House Administration and a member of the Joint Committee on the Library, said, “This action once again tramples on Congress’s Article One authority and throws a trillion-dollar industry into chaos,” referring to Article One of the Constitution, detailing Congress’ powers. “When will my Republican colleagues decide enough is enough?”

We strongly urge congressional leadership to immediately put a stop to this Executive branch overreach. The administration’s action must be reversed and Register Perlmutter restored to her position.