All for Copyright Stand Up and Holler! Three Cheers for Star Athletica and the U.S. Supreme Court's Perceived and Imagined Separately Test

All for Copyright Stand Up and Holler! Three Cheers for Star Athletica and the U.S. Supreme Court's Perceived and Imagined Separately Test

Journal article

22 pages

0736-7694

This article discusses the potential impact of the Star Athletica decision and the Court’s new two-part test for separability. The first section summarizes how product shape and design are protected under our intellectual property laws, explains the preference for copyright, and sets forth federal policy allowing the public to copy products that our patent and copyright laws leave in the public domain. It next provides an overview of how copyright protection for the artistic features incorporated in useful articles evolved between the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Mazer v. Stein and its decision in Star Athletica in 2017. After summarizing the majority, concurring, and dissenting opinions in Star Athletica, the article applies the new test in several difficult pre-Star Athletica cases in order assess the decision’s practical impact on a variety of useful articles.

Published in : Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law, vol. 36, no. 1

[New York City, New York] : Yeshiva University Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, 2018.

eng