One of the fundamental principles of copyright law is the expression vs. idea dichotomy, which states that copyright does not protect ideas but only expressions of ideas. According to this principle, a person who merely contributes an idea to a copyright work cannot claim authorship or joint...

The previous research has not reached a consensus on whether the protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) stimulates innovation, especially in the digital era. And due to the lack of exogenous variation of copyright statute, solid evidence on the causal effect of copyright protection is...

The Copyright Act grants authors and users a set of entitlements in copyrightable works. It is questionable whether and to what extent authors and users can reallocate these rights by entering into legally enforceable contracts. The Seventh Circuit’s historic decision in ProCD, Inc v...

This Chapter discusses the tensions between copyright law and competition and some of the ways through which copyright law itself works to advance competition policy goals. It shows how competition policy goals and anti-monopoly measures shaped the design of copyright since the Statute of Anne,...

Illegal downloading of copyright materials by end-users had its heyday in the early 2000s, with music, television, and film studios desperately searching for a way to curb the tide of sharing. This chapter uses the example of Capitol Records v Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the first file-sharing case to...

The assertion that a 'license' is simply a 'contract not to sue' has become a commonplace in both copyright and patent law. I argue that this notion is conceptually flawed, and has become a straightjacket channeling juristic reasoning into unproductive channels. At root, a license is not a...

This study extends the literature on fighting software piracy by investigating how Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) regimes interact with technology to mitigate software piracy when existing levels of piracy are considered. Two technology metrics (internet penetration rate and number of PC...