Z:gnu-www-ja-eldred-amicus--3ff1fa-Even without reference to the/en

Even without reference to the beginning of the clause, however, this Court's prior opinions show that the Court of Appeals has misperceived the task of construction. The Court of Appeals treats the words &ldquo;limited Times&rdquo; in purely formal terms, so that&mdash;after ten previous interlocking extensions beginning in 1962, holding substantially all works with otherwise-expiring copyrights out of the public domain for a generation&mdash;the CTEA's extension of existing terms for another twenty years raises no substantive constitutional question because the new twenty-year extension period is numerically definite. The same formal, anti-contextual approach to the words would result, however, in the result rejected by this Court in Feist: telephone directories are undeniably &ldquo;writings&rdquo; in the same crabbed sense that the term extension contained in the CTEA is &ldquo;limited.&rdquo;