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Perpetual Copyright?
October 8, 2025
I. INTRODUCTION
1.1. Statement
The author’s economic rights have always been subject to limits in both time and form. Time limits are not just an external restriction; they are essential to maintaining a fair balance between private and public interests. From a legal perspective, and from others as well, temporality is part of the very structure of these rights. The public domain is the natural result of that limitation. It plays a necessary role in completing the system as a whole. This principle is recognized by many constitutions and by international treaties.
On the other hand, there have been formal requirements for copyright1 protection. Their origin and context are historical. In earlier times, protection depended on compliance with specific legal procedures, mainly for reasons of legal certainty. Failure to meet these requirements could cause works to fall into the public domain. In general, the law imposed formalities such as registering works, recording contracts, or depositing copies in libraries.
Additional steps were also required to preserve or prove rights, for example by including legal notices. Yet, despite their practical value, these formalities conditioned the protection of works—something undesirable at best, and a violation of human rights at worst. International treaties have consistently sought to avoid such requirements.
The purpose of this study is twofold yet complementary: (a) to examine whether in Mexico there are still works protected under the —possibly unlimited— provisions of previous laws, which may prevent those works from entering the public domain; and (b) to assess whether, in light of constitutional and international developments, the thesis that authors’ economic rights could be perpetual can be sustained. To address these questions, the study will analyze whether Mexico has ever had a system of unlimited duration for such rights and whether that position is compatible with the current national and international legal framework.