The scenes a faire doctrine, which recognizes elements of a work that are stock, rudimentary, or that arise naturally from a particular theme or setting, is a flexible and capacious limitation on copyright protection that can shield defendants from copyright liability. There are at least five...

This book chapter traces the strange odyssey of interfaces through various forms of intellectual property protection. Interface specifications were initially either public domain documents or protected as trade secrets, depending on whether or not they were published. For a time, it seemed as...