Abracadabra! - Why Copyright Protection For Magic Is Not Just An Illusion

In early 2012, a Dutch magician did something unthinkable within the secretive and tight-knit magic community: he posted a YouTube video of himself performing a fellow magician’s illusion, and offered to reveal the secret to his viewers for a $3,050 fee. The illusion, however, was not just any old trick; it was the signature move of Raymond Teller, one half of the famous magic duo “Penn & Teller.” In April 2012, Teller took the unusual step of filing a lawsuit in federal court, alleging copyright infringement and unfair competition, to protect the secret behind his illusion. It is not clear, however, that magic is a copyright-protectable category of work. Neither the United States 1976 Copyright Act nor the United States’ Copyright Office’s working compendium addresses magic. No federal court has held magic protectable since the Copyright Act was amended in 1976. Still, magic meets the constitutional and statutory requirements for copyright-protectable work. The Teller court should hold that magic illusions are eligible for copyright protection, regardless of whether it finds there was infringement in this particular case

Loose Canons: The Supreme Court\u27s New Interpretive Methodology

Just over fifty years ago, Congress enacted the Clean Water Act (“CWA”) to address burning rivers and bacteria infested waterways that plagued the United States. The objective of the Act was to “restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters.” The judicial branch is responsible for reviewing and interpreting the law, and through such review, the United States Supreme Court has been tasked with interpreting the CWA more than any piece of environmental legislation. In Sackett v. EPA, it did so using a new interpretive approach: canonism

Open secrets

The law of trade secrets is often conceptualized in bilateral terms, as creating and enforcing rights between trade secret owners, on the one hand, and misappropriators on the other hand. This paper, a chapter in a forthcoming collection on the law of trade secrets, argues that trade secrets and the law that guards them can serve structural and institutional roles as well. Somewhat surprisingly, given the law’s focus on secrecy, among the institutional products of trade secrets law are commons, or managed openness: environments designed to facilitate the structured sharing of information. The paper illustrates with examples drawn from existing literature on cuisine, magic, and Internet search.

Copyright protection for magic tricks : a danger lurking in the shadows?

The historical lack of interaction between IP regulation and the magic profession has entered a new chapter following the ground-breaking judgment in the US case of Teller v Dogge. Whilst there has been much commentary about the decision in the US, it has received little attention in the UK. This article therefore explores UK copyright protection for magic tricks and investigates the important question of how magic should be protected