Article by Shubha Ghosh
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit's decision in Veeck v. Southern Building Code Congress International, Inc. calls into the question the copyrightability of model codes and other legal materials and raises provocative questions about the scope of copyrightable subject matter and the meaning of authorship. In this Article, the author analyzes the Fifth Circuit's decision and concludes that its focus on authorship was misguided and potentially destructive to lawmaking through democratic process. The author proposes an alternative basis for the court's holding in the merger doctrine, which would place emphasis on how particular works are used in practice rather than on the status of the code drafter as author. The merger doctrine, it is argued, does greater justice to the economics and politics of law making and provides more precise and intellectually justifiable boundaries to copyright. The Article concludes with a discussion of the question, “Is Everything Copyrightable?,” a question that, after a careful reading of the Veeck case and reconsideration of the merger doctrine, is answered in the negative.
About the Author
Shubha Ghosh. B.A. Amherst College; Ph.D. (Economics), University of Michigan; J.D. Stanford Law School.
Citation
78 Tul. L. Rev. 653 (2004)