The author's name as a trademark: a perverse perspective on the moral right of paternity?

AutorJane Ginsburg
CargoCatedrática en Columbia Law School de New York
Páginas75-84
75
THE AUTHOR´S NAME AS A TRADEMARK: A PERVERSE PERSPECTIVE...
DERECHO DE AUTOR
ABSTRACT
The US Supreme Court in its 2003 decision in Dastar v. Twentieth Century Fox,
construing the Lanham Federal Trademarks Act, deprived authors of their principal legal
means to enforce attribution rights in the US. I have elsewhere criticized the Dastar
Court’s analysis, and have urged amending the Copyright Act to provide express recog-
nition of the attribution right. This time, however, I propose to reconsider the foundation
for the attribution right; I draw on literary and historical sources to supplement legal
arguments concerning the meaning of the author’s name. I will suggest that, contrary to
the usual characterization of this right as flowing from the creative act, the attribution
right also properly derives from trademark law, because the author’s name gives her work
a brand image that informs consumers’ choices of literary and artistic works. In trade-
mark law, the brand name identifies the entity that controls the production of the goods,
who is responsible for their quality. Translated to works of authorship, this would mean
that the act warranting name credit is that of controlling the carrying out of the creation,
rather than of creation as such. In copyright, however, the same concept could logically
lead to depriving any employed creator, as well as a fair number of freelancers, of any
right to impose their names on their works, because the employer or commissioning
party will usually have the last word regarding the form or content of the creation. It is
therefore necessary to propose a more nuanced approach: if the creator has enjoyed
autonomy in the creative process, even if the work was made on demand, the creator has
engaged in intellectual labor that justifies treating the creator as the ‘source’ of the work.
Any other approach would end up denying the role of creativity in copyright. But, as this
Essay proposes to show, to reject all trademark-based rationales for attribution rights
leads to other paradoxes.
The author’s name as a trademark: a perverse
perspective on the moral right of paternity?*
JANE GINSBURG
* Este artículo se publicó en el Columbia Law School, ginsburg@law.columbia.edu
Copyright©2005. Se reproduce con expresa autorización de la autora.
This Essay is based on a translation of Le Nom de l’auteur en tant que signe distinctif: Une
perspective perverse sur le droit à la “paternité” des oeuvres de l’esprit? in Stéphane Martin, ed.,
cahiers du droit de la propriété intellectuelle, numéro special: mélanges offerts à Victor Nabhan
(2004). Thanks to Prof. Greg Lastowka for making me rethink some of the contentions made in
the earlier version.
Anuario Andino de Derechos Intelectuales.
Año III - N.º 3. Lima, 2007

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