The Subject of Copyright

Exploring the concept of copyright subject matter through the lenses of law, aesthetics, and cognitive science, this book describes the historical evolution of a work into an artefact that qualifies as copyrightable subject matter. Discussing the originality requirement towards an artefactual understating of intangible goods, copyright's present struggles with modern societies and technologies, and growing inequalities between rights holders and producers, the book adopts an interdisciplinary approach based on studies in law, aesthetics, neuroscience, and cognitive science to present a novel perspective on the non-artefactual and contextual identification of copyright subject matter. The book examines the challenges raised by aesthetic and neuroaesthetic concepts and cognitive studies, seeking to create a unifying framework of identification strategies for modern copyright law which embrace historical, philosophical, and social perspectives; the book develops a research methodology that offers a new interdisciplinary and holistic approach for understanding the subject of copyright and better addressing the needs of modern society, technology and business models. Touching on normative understandings of creativity and legal-philosophical, aesthetic, and cognitive considerations with regard to the idea/expression dichotomy in copyright law, the book will be of immense interest to legal scholars, legal philosophers, aestheticians, and neuroaestheticians.

Ewa Laskowska-Litak is Assistant Professor of Law and the Head of the Future Law Lab project at the Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland. She holds a PhD, LL.M. (Heidelberg); she is the WIPO expert and active member of international scientific associations (ALAI, EPIP, ATRIP). Ewa is also a former research postdoc visitor at the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Law, University of Cambridge. She was awarded by the Foundation for Polish Science (2016), Ministry of Science and Higher Education (2018-2020), Polish Patent Office (2016). Ewa acted as a principal investigator of several research projects funded by the Polish National Science Centre (2012, 2017), DAAD (2012-2013), and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (2017).

Acknowledgements vi Introduction: how do we know what is protected in copyright law? 1 1 The origins of artefactuality 5 2 The origins of non-artefactuality 43 3 Intuitive artefactuality 82 4 In search of a lost object (the concept) 141 Index 199