Document Type
Notes
Publication Date
8-18-1985
Language
en-US
Recommended Citation
Wendy J. Gordon, Notes on "Natural Property Rights" in Products of the Mind: Lock and Contemporary Controversies in Intellectual Property (Aug. 18, 1985).
Notes
8-18-1985
en-US
Wendy J. Gordon, Notes on "Natural Property Rights" in Products of the Mind: Lock and Contemporary Controversies in Intellectual Property (Aug. 18, 1985).
Comments
In many areas courts are giving new intellectual property rights for reasons they largely leave unarticulated. Noncopyrightable stock averages are being protected by state law. Merchandising emblems and symbols are being protected in non-trademark contexts by trademark law. The right of publicity has expanded to such an extent that judges and commentators al iKe bewail the imminent dangers to the First Amendment caused by the imprecision of the new right’s boundaries. Even in federal copyright law, which explicitly says that facts and ideas should be free of protection, and where inadvertent copying is supposed to be as actionable as intentional piracy, odd things are happening. Summaries of copyrighted factual reports are enjoined on the ground, inter alia, that the copier is a "chiseler," and in a leading fair use case concerning The Nation magazine’s publication of a summary of president Ford’s as-yet-unpublished memoirs, the majority held the magazine’s quotation of only a few scattered sentences amounted to copyright infringement.