Appreciating Our Professors: Larry Lessig
I’m never any good at these questions. I’m always stumped whenever I’m asked, “Who is your hero?” Similarly, although I enjoyed many of my classes, I don’t recall too many “ah-ha” moments in law school that didn’t come from reading a book or an article. For whatever reason, I’m more inspired by ideas than people.
And the idea that I picked up in law school that inspired me more than any other was the idea that law is part of a broader web of human culture, that it both influences other aspects of that culture and is influenced by it. I encountered (at least) two professors at Yale who were grappling with this concept, Bob Ellickson and Larry Lessig. Well, Lessig was only a visitor during the spring semester of my first year. On the other hand, I never took a class with Ellickson, and I’m not sure I’ve even ever met him. I know Ellickson primarily through his classic, Order Without Law: How Neighbors Settle Disputes.
So Lessig it is.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! As you work your way through the (
To anyone who knows IP law, the title of this post looks like either ignorance or craziness. I assure you, it’s not ignorance. Everyone knows that one of the distinguishing features between copyrights and patents is that patents require novelty and nonobviousness, and copyrights don’t. All you need to get a copyright is to have an “original” work of authorship — and “originality” is an extremely low threshold. It doesn’t require that the content be new, and it certainly doesn’t require that it be nonobvious; it only requires that it be yours (that is, “original” to you).