Should Organic Artworks Be Excluded From Copyright Protection?

Zahr Said has just posted her 2015 law review article on copyright’s fixation requirement and conceptual art on SSRN.

Via his abstract, Said argues,

This Essay argues that copyright illogically excludes conceptual art from protection on the basis of fixation, given that well-settled case law has interpreted the fixation requirement to reach works that contain certain kinds of change so long as they are sufficiently repetitive to be deemed permanent. While conceptual art may perhaps be better left outside the scope of copyright protection on the basis of its failure to meet copyright’s other requirements, this Essay concludes that fixation should not be the basis on which to exclude conceptual art from protection. There are of course both normative and descriptive questions around the copyright-ability of conceptual art; this Essay addresses itself primarily to the descriptive question of fixation, and whether works of art that contain change, by design, must be excluded.

Worth a read.

Tags: art, Art Law, Chapman Kelley, conceptual art, Copyright, fixation, Zahr Said