Examining Contracts-based Moral Rights through Academic and Trade Publishing

57 Pages Posted: 13 Oct 2023

Date Written: May 02, 2022

Abstract

The US has a "patchwork" of specific and non-specific laws that directly or incidentally govern moral rights. This article focuses on a subset of this patchwork, contracts and copyright, and examines the utilitarian implications of effectuating attribution and integrity moral rights through the two ("contracts-based moral rights"). The article will examine the advantages and disadvantages of contracts-based moral rights by contrasting the examples of academic and trade public publishing. Ultimately, this article argues that the patchwork's limitations are likely to affect the creative incentives of only a subset of authors: sophisticated but poorly resourced ones. However, the contract-based system is also more likely to generate ex-post psychic harms from the moral rights violations.

Keywords: Moral Rights, Copyright, Intellectual Property, Academic Publishing, Contracts

Suggested Citation

Chen, George, Examining Contracts-based Moral Rights through Academic and Trade Publishing (May 02, 2022). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4573779 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4573779

George Chen (Contact Author)

Harvard Law School ( email )

United States

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