On the prospects of raising the originality requirement in copyright law: Perspectives from the Humanities

Abstract

In 1903, in <em>Bleistein v Donaldson Lithographing</em>, Justice Holmes famously concluded that judges are ill-suited to make merit judgments when determining the eligibility for protection of works. Subsequent courts and commentators have generally followed his caution. Yet, no one has thought through how the copyright system would work were Justice Holmes not heeded. What if courts were called upon to determine the aesthetic merit of a work? How would they go about it? And would they be able to separate the gold from the dross by drawing upon an aesthetic evaluation of such kind?

Auteursrecht, Intellectuele eigendom

Bibtex

Article{vanGompel2013, title = {On the prospects of raising the originality requirement in copyright law: Perspectives from the Humanities}, author = {van Gompel, S. and Lavik, E.}, url = {http://www.ivir.nl/publicaties/download/JCS_2013_3.pdf https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2347361}, year = {1024}, date = {2013-10-24}, journal = {Journal of the Copyright Society of the USA}, volume = {60}, number = {3}, pages = {387-443}, abstract = {In 1903, in <em>Bleistein v Donaldson Lithographing</em>, Justice Holmes famously concluded that judges are ill-suited to make merit judgments when determining the eligibility for protection of works. Subsequent courts and commentators have generally followed his caution. Yet, no one has thought through how the copyright system would work were Justice Holmes not heeded. What if courts were called upon to determine the aesthetic merit of a work? How would they go about it? And would they be able to separate the gold from the dross by drawing upon an aesthetic evaluation of such kind?}, keywords = {Auteursrecht, Intellectuele eigendom}, }