This chapter discusses the interface of artificial intelligence (AI) and intellectual property (IP) law. It focuses on the protection of AI technology, the contentious qualification of AI systems as authors and/or inventors, and the question of ownership of AI-assisted and AI-generated output. The chapter also treats a number of miscellaneous topics, including the question of liability for IP infringement that takes place by or through the intervention of an AI system. More generally, it notes the ambivalent relationship between AI and the IP community, which appears to drift between apparent enthusiasm for the use of AI in IP practice and a clear hesitancy toward catering for additional incentive creation in the AI sphere by amending existing IP laws.

Unlike most of the other jurisdictions discussed in this book, the United States (US) does not currently have, nor did it ever have, a utility model or other system of second-tier patent protection. This being said, discussion and debate over the institution of such a system in the US has been ongoing for more than a century. In this chapter, we discuss the history and current status of this debate, as well as alternative approaches that US agencies and legislators have taken to address the needs and concerns of small and medium-sized inventors.

This chapter explores how readers who have chosen an e-book decide on their next step, contrasting the motivations for purchase (or conditional use license purchase), loan, and piracy. It draws on legal scholarship, book history, and fan studies to investigate how bookness and realness in the form of meaningful ownership can be constituted if desired, acknowledging that bookness and realness may be unwanted when readers prefer temporary, unauthorised, or unambiguously illegal uses. This recasts e-books as an integral part of building a personal library: sometimes as components, but sometimes just as tools. It concludes with evolving understanding of the rights of the reader and the fraught question of e-book control, and readers’ experiences of conflict with corporate entities over ownership of their collections. This further demonstrates how readers are able to move flexibly between conceptions of e-books as real books, ersatz books, and digital proxies.

In a prior study, one of the authors uncovered a striking degree of imbalance with respect to rates of copyright registrations between men and women. Although women made up roughly half of the population between 1978 and 2012, they authored only one third of all registered works. If the U.S. Copyright Office is to properly “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts,” then we must seek to understand what may be contributing to lower rates of creative authorship and copyright registration by women. This chapter discusses several factors that may contribute to the historic inequality in rates of copyright authorship by men and women. Far from exhaustive, the chapter provides a snapshot of some of the structural and economic factors that may discourage authorship by women. Specifically, the authors consider whether the gender disparity in rates of authorship is reflective of gender dynamics in other intellectual property holdings, property ownership more generally, and gender disparity within various creative professions.

This chapter examines the growth of small-press publishing in Ireland during the 2010s and early 2020s. It contextualizes the Irish small-press industry within three broad trends: 1) the global expansion of nonprofit small-press publishing from the 1980s to the present; 2) the Irish state’s financing of literary infrastructure (mostly in the form of strategic funding grants disbursed by the Arts Council of Ireland/An Chomhairle Ealaíon); and 3) the development of rights-sharing agreements between small-press publishers, such that several different small presses will release the same title simultaneously (or in near succession) in different countries. In mapping this global publishing system, the chapter shows how the much-lauded “golden age” of post-crash Irish fiction can be traced to market and institutional dynamics. Specifically, it describes how the consolidation of the international small-press industry has exerted a discernable influence on the aesthetics of contemporary Irish literature, with Irish literature evolving into a field in which certain international styles popular with Anglo-American small presses are cited, borrowed from, reworked, and made into something new.

‘Editions’ focuses on posthumous editions of Goldsmith’s works. It traces the history of editions as a reflection of a gradual shift in Goldsmith’s popularity outside of university curricula. Editions in English and in translation are surveyed. A final section on academic editions begins with the pioneering work of Sir James Prior and Austin Dobson before considering the apotheosis of textual criticism on Goldsmith in the late 1960s. The chapter concludes with some reflections on the movement of editions of Goldsmith out of the home and into the university library, and out of the popular imagination and into the academy.

Dictionaries participate in the “real world,” which means they are subject to legal and ethical issues relevant across professional and commercial fields. Among the legal issues, dictionaries are intellectual products and are themselves intellectual property that draws on others’ intellectual property. Thus, dictionaries encounter copyright and trademark challenges: they incorporate material under copyright or trademark protection, and they have their own copyrights and trademarks to protect. Among ethical issues, recognition afforded those who make dictionaries figures prominently, as in the history of dictionaries, many of those involved in their making were abandoned to anonymity. Recently, intelligent dictionary readers have noticed cultural biases in dictionary entries, in the language used to define words, for instance, or labeling and other assertions of value embedded in dictionary structure. Some have boycotted dictionaries over such ethical lapses and dictionaries have responded, constructing a new ethical relationship between makers and readers of dictionaries.

Since the 1960s manga has boasted a firm standing in the Japanese economy and society by continuously offering captivating and commercially successful narratives. This has been made possible in great measure by the manga magazines as the central venue of publication from the 1960s until the late 1990s, and their editor-in-charge system. This chapter surveys the multiple roles that manga editors fulfill, from corporate agent to manga artists’ collaborator and target-audience representative. It introduces the basic institutional steps of producing a manga serial while considering differences between printed and digital formats, up to and including remuneration practices. The main focus is on corporate manga’s commodity value as the common goal of both editors and artists, as well as the related fact that readership, or consumption, is given precedence over authorship, and collaborative over individual authorship.

This chapter provides an overview of manga usage in Japan. First, it traces the contours of the production side and the historic structuring function of print magazines, as well as their connections to anime. Second, the chapter delves into readership, consumption, and use. Issues of agency make room for a discussion of publications produced and distributed outside official commercial channels but in dialogue with them, and the Comic Market as their biggest sales-spot event. Third, the chapter exposes how different standards of regulation allowed eroticism to spread throughout manga and related media and material forms in Japan. Assumptions about consumption are unsettled through the example of Weekly Shōnen Jump, even as assumptions about production are disrupted through the suggestion that women are the majority of erotic manga artists today. Final thoughts are given on friction in the global circulation and reception of manga, which presents both challenges and opportunities for manga studies specifically and comics studies generally.

Guitar shop showrooms are museums of design. As visitors walk by rows of instruments, they encounter a tactile history of popular music. However, shoppers may notice that the majority of electric guitars available in the modern marketplace are strikingly similar. While there are certainly instances of radically new styles, they are outnumbered by instruments that resemble mid-twentieth century designs, such as the Fender Stratocaster and the Gibson Les Paul. This chapter explores moments in electric guitar design history that speak to marketplace tensions between historical consciousness and innovation. There is a widespread belief that the electric guitar was perfected half a century ago. Therefore, new design choices must be in conversation with the past. Success stories—such as Fender’s Custom Shop series—rely upon such historical nods. Design flops—such as Gibson’s “G-Force” automatic tuner—fail because they innovate beyond what buyers are willing to accept. So, is the electric guitar dead, as some commentators have proclaimed? I argue that the instrument is in a persistent state of rebirth as new models move forwards by looking backwards.

This chapter addresses the phenomenon of unauthorized minting of NFTs. Specifically, the chapter examines whether copyright law should allow minting of NFTs that is not authorized by the author of the underlying work. Despite the immense growth of the NFT market, the answer to this question has remained unclear under extant copyright laws around the world. To provide foundations for policy-making in this arena, the chapter seeks to form a normative stance towards the question of unauthorized minting. It does so by analyzing this question from the perspective of the key theories that underly copyright law, including the utilitarian theory, the labor theory, and the personality theory. The matter is also examined from the viewpoint of cultural diversity and distributive justice considerations, which provide important underpinning for copyright policy. All in all, the analysis offers a normative basis for the conclusion that the right to mint an NFT should be awarded to the author of the work that underlies the NFT.

Copyright law safeguards the exclusive rights of authors to their intellectual creations, emphasizing reproduction, public display, and adaptation. A fundamental distinction within this realm is between the intangible creative work and its tangible representations. Owning a tangible embodiment (like a painting) does not grant rights to reproduce the intellectual work it embodies. This demarcation is critical in the dynamic landscape of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), as acquiring an NFT does not automatically confer rights to the associated work. Instead, rights hinge on explicit contractual terms accompanying the NFT transaction. As the world of NFTs continues to unfold in all sorts of directions, delving deep into the intricacies of copyright law is important for artists, investors, and legal practitioners navigating the digital frontier. This chapter offers insights into the various copyright implications associated with NFTs.

Fueled in part by the wealth created from digital currencies, major art dealers such as Christie’s and Sotheby’s have embraced the sale of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) attached to unique digital works of art. NFTs, how they are related to the blockchain, and the evolution of the market for digital art is the subject of this chapter. Despite recent decreases in value, it appears that digital art can be added to the growing list of uses for blockchain technology, which is now becoming a part of modern life. This chapter proceeds in five sections. First, the overview of the evolutionary progression of blockchain technology in the form of NFTs. Second, a description of the emergence of the market for digital art. Third, an explanation and historical account of digital art and related recent issues. Fourth, a coverage of the abrupt decline in the market price for many NFTs. And last, a conclusion, which focuses on how the dramatic extension of blockchain and other digital technology to the world of art represents a new and exciting platform for creative expression. This chapter offers a valuable addition to the literature by providing a readable introduction and overview of what is now known about the likely impact of blockchain technology and NFTs to art. Additionally, this important development should have a significant impact on the future of innovation and property law.

On December 9, 1949, Huddie Ledbetter died in a New York hospital at the age of sixty. This chapter briefly looks at the life that he and Martha remade after their permanent return to New York in early 1936. It also looks at damage caused to Ledbetter’s career by the November 1936 publication of Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Lead Belly, as well as all of the Lomax-driven publicity over the previous two years. In 1939, an altercation at a party hosted by the Ledbetters leads an unsympathetic prosecutor and judge, citing false narratives about Lead Belly, to incarcerate him yet again, this time at Rikers. Released later in 1939, he and Martha continue to build a new life. Over time, Huddie Ledbetter builds a celebrated (but not remunerative) career with significant impact on the folk and labor movements as well as the ongoing evolution of American musical forms, including rock and roll.