Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The rise of capitalism, the invention of the printing press, and the commodification of literary and artistic domains helped lay the economic, technological, and legal-philosophical groundwork that led to the development of intellectual property laws. There are three major categories of intellectual property law – copyright, trademark, and patent law – though it was copyright law that was the first piece of legislation to arise from the collision of those above-mentioned concepts. In 1710, Britain passed the Statute of Anne, which was akin to modern copyright law, and in 1790 the US Congress passed a copyright law similar to this British statute. Copyright law secures protection for all types of original expression, including art, literature, music, songs, choreography, flow charts, software, photography, movies, video games, and videos. Copyright only protects original expression fixed in a medium, and not the underlying concepts and ideas comprising that expression (i.e., you cannot copyright an idea). The differentiation between an idea and the protected expression of that idea highlights the way Enlightenment and Romantic notions of originality and authorship are deeply embedded in contemporary copyright law. Trademark law developed from a body of common law that was concerned with protecting commercial marks from being misused and misrepresented by competing companies. Lastly, ... log in or subscribe to read full text