Narrowing intellectual property rights, a court recently decided that the “Happy Birthday” song could enter the public domain because no one owned it.…
Deciding Who Owns LeBron’s Tattoo
A Manhattan court will decide if tattoos on NBA athletes like LeBron James can have a copyright that protects artists’ intellectual property rights.…
Weekly Roundup: From Skyscraper Shadows to Trendy Foods
This week’s everyday economics includes property rights, trade, creative destruction, entitlements, tradeoffs, conservation, externalities, price, and markets.…
Why Birthday Cat Is Grumpy
When deciding whether the Happy Birthday song has a copyright, we are really debating how broad or narrow intellectual property rights should be.…
Can the Supreme Court Change How We Watch TV?
At the Supreme Court this week, broadcasters sought to stop a small firm from competing against them. Saying it was violating copyright law, ABC led a group challenging Aereo’s business model. A…
Innovation: More (or Fewer?) Sole Rights
A book that you write is your intellectual property. But what if you design the sole of a shoe? As econlife described last year: “The trademark of designer Christian Louboutin, his red soles are…
A Trademark Sandwich
Combine either corned beef, pastrami, turkey or salami with 2 large latkes (potato pancakes) and you have a $24.95 lunch that Manhattan’s 2nd Avenue Deli calls its Instant Heart Attack Sandwich.…
There's No Such Thing as Free Music…
By Mira Korber, guest blogger. You are a young musician on the brink of your professional career. Graduation is in May, orchestra auditions are around the corner, and where do you go to begin preparin…
The Supreme Court and Picasso
This Supreme Court case could affect the music you hear at a concert, the book you can access on Google and the Picasso you might see online. The case is all about copyright protection. The question: …
Song Rights
When do we own what we create? It depends. For Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel, hit albums controlled by record companies might soon become theirs again. During the mid-1970s, the Congress decided th…