Lost Classics of Intellectual Property Law
12 Pages Posted: 6 Aug 2014
Date Written: August 1, 2014
Abstract
Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” American legal scholarship often suffers from a related sin of omission: failing to acknowledge its intellectual debts. This short piece attempts to cure one possible source of the problem, in one discipline: inadequate information about what’s worth reading among older writing. I list “lost classics” of American scholarship in intellectual property law. These are not truly “lost,” and what counts as “classic” is often in the eye of the beholder (or reader). But these works may usefully be found again, and intellectual property law scholarship would be strengthened by better and more consistent acknowledgement of earlier work.
Keywords: intellectual property, patent, copyright, trademark, scholarship
JEL Classification: K11, O34
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation