Mark A Lemley, ‘Authoring While Dead’, 59 Georgia Law Review (2025). Abe Lincoln was fond of relating a story about a lawyer who tried to argue that a calf had five legs by calling its tail a leg. The folksy Lincolnian upshot was that this lawyer not only lost, but also looked foolish in the process, because simply calling a tail a leg does not make it so. Mark Lemley’s ‘Authoring While Dead’ spins a copyright version of Abe’s old yarn. Songwriters have recently begun listing as co-authors of their musical works artists who cannot be regarded as ‘authors’ under any remotely plausible reading of the Copyright Act. Lemley’s vivid article explores the origins and rapid ascension of this industry practice. He explains with welcome drollery why this is the copyright equivalent of calling a tail a leg. He further offers a caution why what may seem like mere formalism, in fact, poses serious problems for copyright law … (more)
[David Fagundes, JOTWELL, 3 March 2026]
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