Scholarly Commons @ IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law
Abstract
This note uses humorous illustrations culled from the history of popular heavy metal music to facilitate examination of the effectiveness of joint authorship analysis by modern federal courts. The note carefully considers a variety of common contributions made by band members in the absence of any written or verbal agreement about authorship, and concludes (1) that a more equitable regime would do away with the requirement that a co-author make an independently copyrightable contribution, and (2) that courts must take greater care not to transform will to control into intent to be a sole author
