How did authors control the literary fates of fictional characters before the existence of copyright? Could a second author do anything with another author's character? Situated between the decline of the privilege system and the rise of copyright, literary borrowing in eighteenth-century Germany has long been considered unregulated. This book tells a different story. Characters before Copyright documents the surprisingly widespread eighteenth-century practice of writing fan fictionliterary works written by readers who appropriate preexisting characters invented by other authorsand reconstructs the contemporaneous debate about the literary phenomenon. Like fan fiction today, these texts took the form of sequels, prequels, and spinoffs. Analyzing the evolving reading, writing, and consumer habits of late-eighteenth-century Germany, Characters before Copyright identifies the social, economic, and aesthetic changes that fostered the rapid rise of fan fiction after 1750. Based on archival work and an ethnographic approach borrowed from legal anthropology, this book then uncovers the unwritten customary norms that governed the production of these works. Characters before Copyright thus reinterprets the eighteenth-century literary commons, arguing that what may appear to have been the free circulation of characters was actually circumscribed by an exacting set of rules and conditions. These norms translated into a unique type of literature that gave rise to remarkable forms of collaborative authorship and originality. Characters before Copyright provides a new perspective on the eighteenth-century book trade and the rise of intellectual property, reevaluating the concept of literary property, the history of moral rights, and the tradition of free culture.

This book argues that moral rights provisions in copyright law rest on a misunderstanding, or romanticisation, of the role of the author. The Romantic conception of authorship, as a lone genius, creating from nothing, sensitive and vulnerable, has helped publishers push for strong copyright reform. But is this conception borne out in practice – especially in a world of meme culture, of artificial intelligence generated art and poetry, and of open source and fan fiction? This book probes the romantic vignette of the author through its legal adoption. Moral rights are rights that attach to the non-economic – for example, intellectual or emotional – interests of an author in their work. Much like defamation, moral rights see the right of reputation as superior to the right of freedom of expression. However, unlike defamation, moral rights are not protecting against defamatory actions against a person. In most jurisdictions, they are provisions set within copyright regimes; regimes whose purpose is to incentivise innovation. Challenging the way we think about authorship and how it should be protected by law, the book draws on a wide range of historical and contemporary examples to demonstrate how moral rights can constitute a barrier to transformative creativity. While authors and artists require strong rights to protect their ability to earn an income and incentivise creativity, moral rights, the book argues, may in turn actually harm their ability to do so. This timely criticism of moral rights will appeal to researchers, students, policy makers and lawyers working in the area of intellectual property law, as well as legal theorists, sociolegal scholars and legal historians with relevant interests.

Detailed advice (and plenty of sample forms, worksheets and agreements) on everything from getting a business started to kicking out an unwanted partner later. - Los Angeles Times - It is the most definitive, complete and current do-it-yourself patent book ever written and it is written in easy-to-understand laymen's terms. - Mary Bellis, Inventor's Guide at About.com - Every step of the patent process is presented in order in this gem of a book, complete with official forms - San Francisco Chronicle - David Pressman is a practicing patent attorney, a former patent examiner, and the author of Patent It Yourself. His book is easy to understand and can save thousands of dollars by writing your own patent application, or by writing much of it, and having a patent agent or attorney edit and write the claims section. - Jack Lander, The Inventor's Bookstore - Like all law, [patent law] is pretty complex stuff. This clearly written guide will help minimize legal fees by preparing you to do what you can for yourself.- Mike Maza, Dallas Morning News - The book presents complicated procedures in easily digested chunks, with anecdotes, forms and plenty of old-fashioned good advice - The Denver Post - The most complete and authoritative work on patents and inventions for laypersons - InventNet - Contains all necessary forms and instructions plus advice on marketing your invention. - Money Magazine - The best roll-up-your-sleeves guide for filers who don't want to pay a ransom. - Inc.- Patent It Yourself is a top-notch reference for patent and trademark information. - San Francisco Examiner

Winner, Matei Calinescu Prize, Modern Language Association Winner, 2021 Modernist Studies Award, Modernist Studies Association Long before the US Supreme Court announced that corporate persons freely "speak" with money in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), they elaborated the legal fiction of American corporate personhood in Santa Clara v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886). Yet endowing a non-human entity with certain rights exposed a fundamental philosophical question about the possibility of collective intention. That question extended beyond the law and became essential to modern American literature. This volume offers the first multidisciplinary intellectual history of this story of corporate personhood. The possibility that large collective organizations might mean to act like us, like persons, animated a diverse set of American writers, artists, and theorists of the corporation in the first half of the twentieth century, stimulating a revolution of thought on intention. The ambiguous status of corporate intention provoked conflicting theories of meaning—on the relevance (or not) of authorial intention and the interpretation of collective signs or social forms—still debated today. As law struggled with opposing arguments, modernist creative writers and artists grappled with interrelated questions, albeit under different guises and formal procedures. Combining legal analysis of law reviews, treatises, and case law with literary interpretation of short stories, novels, and poems, this volume analyzes legal philosophers including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Frederic Maitland, Harold Laski, Maurice Wormser, and creative writers such as Theodore Dreiser, Muriel Rukeyser, Gertrude Stein, Charles Reznikoff, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and George Schuyler.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then it's a good bet that at least half of those words relate to the picture's copyright status. Art historians, artists, and anyone who wants to use the images of others will find themselves awash in byzantine legal terms, constantly evolving copyright law, varying interpretations by museums and estates, and despair over the complexity of the whole situation. Here, on a white—not a high—horse, Susan Bielstein offers her decades of experience as an editor working with illustrated books. In doing so, she unsnarls the threads of permissions that have ensnared scholars, critics, and artists for years. Organized as a series of “takes” that range from short sidebars to extended discussions, Permissions, A Survival Guide explores intellectual property law as it pertains to visual imagery. How can you determine whether an artwork is copyrighted? How do you procure a high-quality reproduction of an image? What does “fair use” really mean? Is it ever legitimate to use the work of an artist without permission? Bielstein discusses the many uncertainties that plague writers who work with images in this highly visual age, and she does so based on her years navigating precisely these issues. As an editor who has hired a photographer to shoot an incredibly obscure work in the Italian mountains (a plan that backfired hilariously), who has tried to reason with artists' estates in languages she doesn't speak, and who has spent her time in the archival trenches, she offers a snappy and humane guide to this difficult terrain. Filled with anecdotes, asides, and real courage, Permissions, A Survival Guide is a unique handbook that anyone working in the visual arts will find invaluable, if not indispensable.

Publishing Law is an authoritative and engaging guide to a wide range of legal issues affecting publishing today. Hugh Jones and Christopher Benson present readers with clear and accessible guidance to the complex legal areas specific to the ever evolving world of contemporary publishing, including copyright, moral rights, contracts and licensing, privacy, confidentiality, defamation, infringement and trademarks, with analysis of legal issues relating to sales, advertising, marketing, distribution and competition. This new fifth edition presents updated coverage of the key principles of copyright , as well as new copyright exceptions, licensing and open access. There is also further in-depth coverage of the legal issues around the sale of digital content. Key features of the fifth edition include: updated coverage of EU and UK copyright, including a new chapter on copyright exceptions following the significant changes in the 2014 Regulations Comprehensive coverage of publishing contracts with authors, as well as with other providers, including translators, contributors and contracts for subsidiary rights up to date coverage of the Defamation Act 2013, and other changes to EU and UK legislation exploration of the legal issues relating to digital publishing, including eBook and other electronic agreements, data protection and online issues in relation to privacy, and copyright infringement a range of summary checklists on key issues, ranging from copyright ownership to promotion and data protection useful appendices offering an A to Z glossary of legal terms and lists of useful address and further reading.