Law and Magic Blog

ICYMI: Markley on Hocus Pocus: The Magic Within Trade Secret Law

ICYMI: Marianna L. Markley has published Note: Hocus Pocus: The Magic Within Trade Secret Law at 27 Journal of Intellectual Property Law 111 (Fall 2019).

Magicians and IP at Freedom To Tinker

An old post at Freedom To Tinker. Ed Felton discusses Jacob Loshin's Secrets Revealed: How Magicians Protect Intellectual Property Without Law. Some interesting discussion in the comments. 

You can read the Loshin paper in its published form at Jacob Loshin, Secrets Revealed: How Magicians Protect Intellectual Property Without Law 123 Law and Magic (Christine A. Corcos, ed., Carolina Academic Press, 2010). 

ICYMI: Sara J. Crasson, Own Your Magic: A Magician's Guide To Protecting Your Intellectual Property

ICYMI:

Sara J. Crasson, Own Your Magic: A Magician's Guide To Protecting Your Intellectual Property. Foreword by David Copperfield (2019).

 

Review here from New York Law Journal. 

Fagundes and Perzanowski on Clown Eggs, Creative Norms, and the Social Value of Property Registers @Dave_Fagundes @APerzanowski

Dave Fagundes, University of Houston Law Center, and Aaron Perzanowski, Case Western Reserve School of Law, have published Clown Eggs, Creative Norms and the Social Value of Property Registers. Here is the abstract.

Since 1946, many clowns have recorded their makeup by having it painted on eggs that are kept in a central registry in Wookey Hole, England. This tradition, which continues today, has been referred to alternately as a form of informal copyright registration and a means of protecting clowns’ property in their personae. This Article explores the clown egg register and its surrounding practices from the perspective of law and social norms. In so doing, it makes several contributions. First, it contributes another chapter to the growing literature on the norms-based governance of intellectual property, showing how clowns—like comedians, roller derby skaters, tattoo artists, and other subcultures—have developed an elaborate informal scheme in lieu of state-created copyright or trademark law to regulate their creative production. Second, this Article explores a rarer phenomenon in the norm-based IP context: formalized registration related to norm-based ownership rules. It shows that the Register exists not only to support those rules, but also serves a host of non-property functions, including expressing members’ professionalism, conferring a sense of prestige, and creating a historical record. Finally, this Article shows how its analysis of the Register offers lessons for the study of norms and law more generally. It points the way toward pluralist theories of norms-based regulation, and it highlights the underappreciated non-property functions of other ownership registers in the context of tangible and intellectual property alike.

Download the article at the link.

 

At footnotes 89 and 122, the article cites to this blog's post, Clowning Around, guest blogger Professor Lee Ann Lockridge. Footnote 18 cites to Jacob Loshin's essay in Law and Magic: A Collection of Essays (C.A. Corcos, CAP, 2018).

ICYMI: Droit et Surnaturel (Law and the Supernatural), edited by Jean-Christophe Roda @librarieLGDJ @jc_roda

For the bookshelf (ICYMI):

 

Droit et surnaturel (Jean-Christophe Roda, ed., L.G.D.J., 2015) (Grands colloques). Includes Nicolas Bronzo,  Enchantements et (dés)illusions : la magie et la propriété intellectuelle. 

Law and the Supernatural: A Newly Published Volume From a 2013 Conference

From the mailbox: I've received a copy, courtesy of the authors and publisher, of the wonderful Droit et surnaturel (Issy-les-Moulineaux: lextenso, 2015), edited by Jean-Christophe Roda, a professor of law at the University of Aix-Marseille. This volume collects the papers from a conference held jointly by the University of Aix-Marseille, Centre de Droit economique and the School of Law, University of Aix-en-Provence, September 27, 2013.

It contains 2 introductory surveys and 10 essays by leading scholars on various areas in the subject of law and magic: here's what it contains--law and exorcism, by Herve Lecuyer of the University of Paris II, the supernatural and contract law, by Frederic Buy, of the University of the Auvergne and Marie Lamoureux, of the University of Aix-Marseille, criminal law and the supernatural, by Philippe Bonfils, of the University of Aix-Marseille, occultisme and family law, by Vincent Egea, of the University of Toulon, belief and civil responsibility, by Julien Theron of the University of Toulouse-I, magic and IP, by Nicolas Bronzo, of the University of Aix-Marseille, and numerology and symbolism in the Code of Civil Procedure by Emmanuel Putman of the University of Aix-Marseille (I have to show that one to my civil law colleagues here at LSU--well, I have to share the whole book with my civil law colleagues, frankly), witchcraft law three hundred years after Salem, by Jean-Christophe Roda, of the University of Aix-Marseille, and law and sorcery by Louis-Daniel Muka Tshibende of the Catholic University of Lyon. There is also a concluding essay by Remy Cabrillac of the Faculty of Law, University of Montpellier.

A treasure trove of scholarly writing on this subject.

More here from the publisher's website.

Another Overview of IP Protection For Magic Tricks

From the 1709 Blog, a post dated 2013, discussing IP protection for magicians' tricks and illusions. Some new material here. The author also runs through Teller's lawsuit against Bakardy, the Robert Rice case, and the Think-a-Drink case. A nice overview, although it's not limited just to the possibility (or not) of copyright protection for magicians' work, even though the blog itself is a copyright blog, and the post is labeled "Copyright In Tricks: Could It Be Magic?"  The name of the blog, by the way, comes from the year that the Statute of Anne created the first copyright law.

An Overview of IP Law and Magic

Mark Hay's nice survey of IP protection for magicians appears here.

Yes, I admit: shameless self promotion.

 

Another Blog That Understands Us

Trademarks Are Magic. Perfect!

Another Article on Copyright Infringement and the Teller Case

Another interesting piece on the possibility (or not) that copyright law can protect magicians' intellectual property.

Jenny Small, The Illusion of Copyright Infringement Protection, 12 Chi-Kent J. Intell. Prop. 217 (Summer 2013). Here are the first few paragraphs of the article.

The schism between knowing and seeing may be magic's allure, but when the magician sees a fellow entertainer perform his signature trick, he wants to know that the law affords him protection.  Law, like magic, revolves around expectations. Magic defies one's expectations, but law secures them. Yet, in the realm of copyright law, magicians' expectations for protection are unclear. 

As a teenager, Raymond Joseph Teller, of Penn & Teller, envisioned an illusion never before seen. He perfected the trick, and it became known as his signature "Shadows." In the trick, a vase with a rose rests upon a stool and its shadow projects onto a wall. Teller, the "murderer," approaches the shadow $=P218 with a knife, and, as he cuts the petals of the shadow, the real rose petals fall. In 1983, after performing the trick for about seven years, Teller submitted it for copyright registration, using a cartoon-like diagram with a description of the setting, characters, and action. In copyrighting his illusion, he attempted to protect his labor without revealing the secret behind the act. 

Until 2012, Teller was the only person to have performed this trick. In that year, however, the video "A Rose & Her Shadow" appeared on YouTube. In the video, Gerard Dogge (alias Bakardy of Los Dos de Amberes) used a knife to cut a projected rose's shadow. Dogge allegedly figured out the secret behind Teller's trick and either devised another way to create the illusion or used video editing to make an audience believe that he could perform the trick. Dogge concluded the video with an offer to sell the trick's secret for 2,450 Euros ($ 3,050). After a failed attempt to negotiate with Dogge, Teller sued him for copyright infringement. 

Teller's case represents two emerging legal complexities--the struggle to protect the intellectual property of untraditional artistic creations, like magic and the growing difficulty of preventing artistic replication. This case includes many interesting facets such as Dogge's defamation countersuit in Belgium, issues related to moral and derivative rights, a failed negotiation, and a defendant who all but disappeared. The primary focus of this paper, however, is Teller's copyright infringement claim. Part I addresses the current law surrounding copyright protection of magic and the performance arts. Next, Part II lays out the facts of Teller's case. Finally, Part III discusses Teller's likelihood of success considering the case precedent he must overcome.

 

As you may know, Mr. Teller won in the U. S. District Court on March 21, 2014.   Mark Tratos of Greenberg Traurig, Las Vegas, NV did a remarkable job of representing him in this case.