Reimagining Bleistein: Copyright for Advertisements in Historical Perspective

Abstract

This article traces the development of copyright law for commercial prints and labels, looking at the history of the 1874 Act which placed registration of copyrights in the Patent Office, as well as the two Supreme Court cases which dealt with this act - the mostly forgotten Higgins v. Keuffel, and the still very influential Bleistein v. Donaldson Lithographing. In so doing the development of the scope of copyright law in both the constitutional and normative senses is addressed, and the Bleistein decision is considered in a new light. Statistics are also included, demonstrating the development and use of this copyright law.

In August of 2013, this article won the Charles B. Seton Award of the Copyright Society of the USA, which is given to a piece published in its journal in the previous year by an author under the age of 40 that "constitutes a significant contribution to scholarship in copyright law and displays original and creative ideas not previously published."

Keywords: copyright, advertisements, trademarks, labels, Constitution

JEL Classification: O34, K00