Law and Magic Blog

Pierre Fleury-LeGros on Consent and the Pursuit of Perfection in Magic

Pierre Fleury-LeGros, Universite du Havre, has published Le consentement à l’épreuve du perfectionnement de l’œuvre de magie in Le Consentement (Legitech, 2021). 

Those Magical Spoons! @PhilipTreece

From CollectingMagic.co.uk, a piece about trick spoons from Philip David Treece.  

A Visit to Tannen's, and Some Magic History @atlasobscura @tannensmagic @slaskow

For Atlas Obscura, Sarah Laskow writes about a visit to the fabled magic shop Tannen's, some magic history, and an encounter with magician Noah Levine. Ms. Laskow notes,

 

Even if you know how cups and balls works, in the hands of a skillful performer, you won’t see the movement of the balls, no matter how carefully you look. When Penn and Teller do it in full view it still feels like magic. The same principle applies to New York itself. However many times you walk down a street, paying close attention, some detail escapes your notice, or only exists for those in the know. The grave of Harry Houdini, perhaps the most famous magician in history, is part of a family plot in Queens, and though it might seem like an obvious attraction it spent years in disrepair. I’ve walked past the year-round Halloween costume store on Broadway countless times and never knew of the magic shop in the basement, stocked with throwbacks to the 1980s. Without an invitation, there’s no way to discover the illegal poker room hidden somewhere in Soho, where Levine was once asked to perform. New York itself is an engine of misdirection.

Magician Needs a Little More Practice

Polish morning TV host Marzena Rogalska probably won't be applying for another job as a magician's assistant anytime soon. She agreed to help a guest, Marcin Połoniewicz, a magician who had appeared on the Polish version of Poland's Got Talent, with a trick in which a nail is concealed, point up, in one of four paper bags. Helped along by the magician, the participant in the trick successively hits each paper bag (heightening the suspense), but not injuring herself, and the magician then demonstrates that the nail is in (ta da) the last paper bag. Unfortunately, you guessed it. The nail wasn't in the last paper bag, and Ms. Rogalska ended up with the nail in her hand. She screamed (I would have done a lot more than that). The magician thought she was pretending (I suppose until he saw the nail), convincing him that she needed medical attention, stat. Meanwhile, according to media accounts, her co-host just kept smiling. Just another day on morning TV, I suppose. Yikes.

She's doing much better now, thank you, and says that the mishap wasn't the aspiring Houdini's fault. She's more generous than I would have been, I think. I've accidentally stapled my finger, and that's painful. I cannot imagine impaling my hand with a nail.

 

Video (actually still pictures with narrative) here.   Another account here from the Sydney Morning Herald.  NB: Rather disturbing.

 

If you want to see a "nail gun" (Russian roulette) illusion that looks really dangerous, but isn't, and is really funny, here's Penn and Teller's nail gun routine.

Magic, Psychology, and Neuroscience

Via Tony Barnhart of Carthage College, professor of Psychology and professional magician, news of this set of research papers at the website Frontiers.

The collection is called The Psychology of Magic and the Magic of Psychology, and consists of 14 papers by 36 authors.

Among the pieces: Peter Lamont, Problems with the mapping of magic tricks and Anthony S. Barnhart and Stephen D. Goldinger, Blinded by magic: Eye-movements reveal the misdirection of attention.

There are many more interesting articles to dive into--recommended.

The Suspension of Divisive Beliefs

David Copperfield writes on the links between magic and free speech here, for the New York Times.

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.

 

Apps-Solutely Magic!

Kit Eaton of the New York Times offers up reviews of these apps for the SmartPhone that may not turn you into a Vegas conjuror. But they look like fun, anyway.

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.