Copyright 2013 Tonya M. Evans (published by Marquette Intellectual Property Law Review)
Credit: Leaping Lion Photography
“With the advent of the Internet and digital technology, the twenty-first century has ushered in a quantum increase in the ways to create, disseminate, and commercially exploit creativity. Digital technology allows anyone to create perfect digital copies of protected works in the comfort of their homes and to distribute them to tens, hundreds, thousands, and even millions of people with the click of a hyperlink via a handheld device. Indeed, copyright touches more ordinary people in substantial ways in this age of information than at any other time in American copyright history.
[….]
This Article asserts that copyright reform initiatives should “sample” (that is, borrow from) patent policies that protect access for further innovation to “remix” (that is, inform and reform) copyright law for the same end in the creative context. Throughout the Article, I use appropriation art to illustrate how an established cumulative medium of artistic creation is negatively impacted by overly restrictive copyright laws and may benefit from patent policies seemingly more well suited to encourage and support such creative innovation. Continue reading “Publication Alert: Reverse Engineering IP by IP law Prof. Tonya M. Evans (digital tech & IP)”→
Recently Professor Tonya Evans accepted an invitation to present her work-in-progress, Sampling, Looping and Mashing … Oh My!: How Hip hop Music is Scratching More Than the Surface of Copyright Law, at the Intellectual Property Scholars Conference to be held at the UC Berkeley School of Law on August 12th and 13th, 2010.
In her article, Professor Evans notes that although the United States Constitution directs Congress to regulate copyright and patent laws ultimately to serve human values and social ends by promoting innovation and creativity, copyright law as currently applied to the medium of music, both the performance embodied in a sound recording and the underlying musical composition itself, fails to meet that constitutional directive. This point, argues Professor Evans, is illustrated quite clearly in the case of a musical genre like “hip hop” that for decades has relied on the innovative use of existing recordings (most of which are protected by copyright), to create completely new works.
The annual conference is co-sponsored by the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, Berkeley Law School; the Intellectual Property Program, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University; the Center for Intellectual Property Law and Information Technology, DePaul University College of Law; and the Stanford Program in Law, Science & Technology, Stanford Law School.
The IP Scholars Conference brings together intellectual property scholars to present their works-in-progress and to listen and discuss others’ works. The format of the conference is designed to facilitate open discussion and to help scholars hone their ideas.
Professor Evans’ article,