Litigation
Cal. Litig. VOLUME 37, ISSUE 3, DECEMBER 2024
Content
- Attorney Proffers Post-menendez: How To Make the Risk Worth the Reward
- Chair's Column
- Climbing the Mountain Again
- Editor's Foreword: New Leadership Arrives
- How Joining the California Supreme Court Historical Society Can Benefit You
- Inside This Issue
- Over Ruled: the Human Toll of Too Much Law
- PAST SECTION CHAIRS & EDITORS-IN-CHIEF
- Postscript: Updating California's International Arbitration Code
- Presidential Immunity: Precedential Impunity?
- Reconciling the Duty of Zealous Advocacy and Civility
- Remember Korematsu?
- SECTION OFFICERS & EDITORIAL BOARD
- Selected Evidence Issues With Depositions of the Person Most Qualified/Knowledgeable In California and Federal Courts In the Ninth Circuit
- Table of Contents
- The California Supreme Court In Judicial Year 2024: the C.J. Guerrero Era Is Underway
- Working: Conversations With Essential Workers
- Who Owns This Sentence?: a History of Copyrights and Wrongs
WHO OWNS THIS SENTENCE?: A HISTORY OF COPYRIGHTS AND WRONGS
Written by David Bellos and Alexandre Montagu Reviewed by Marc D. Alexander
California, home to entertainment giants and Silicon Valley, has a huge stake in the development and application of copyright law. While lawyers rely on Nimmer on Copyright for depth, curious readers interested in a broad and engaging overview of copyright’s history and modern challenges will enjoy reading Who Owns This Sentence? by David Bellos and Alexandre Montagu. The book efficiently covers authorial rights from antiquity to today, including the impact of technology, international perspectives, and robust criticism of copyright law.
David Bellos, a literature professor and translator at Princeton, and Alexandre Montagu, a multilingual attorney specializing in intellectual property law, bring a combined expertise that enriches the text. Montagu’s background in law and Bellos’s literary knowledge allow them to offer a multifaceted analysis of copyright issues, blending legal, historical, and literary insights.
The authors begin in antiquity, and proceed through the Renaissance, England’s Statute of Anne, the Berne Convention, and United States copyright law, up to the present. The international dimension covers England, France, Russia, China, the United States, and the Berne Convention, underscoring that authorial rights overlap but are not necessarily identical to rights protected by copyright. The impact of technology touches upon paper, woodblocks, Gutenberg, etchings, photography, film, software, and the most challenging technology, AI.