A friend reminded me to read Paul Goldstein’s “Errors and Omissions” (he was reminded by the publication of Professor Goldstein’s new book, “A Patent Lie“). I brought it for my summer beach reading and was highly entertained to read a novel about the topic of the blog, ownership of IP. The premise is that a film studio needs an assignment of the copyright in a screenplay, the first of a series of successful spy movies, or it can’t make the next in the series because the insurance company won’t issue a policy. It was an entertaining read; I loved the introduction of the main character in the first chapter and thought it was great fun that Professor Goldstein could take what some would consider a dry legal topic and turn it into a thriller.
I would appreciate anyone’s help explaining what I thought was an error in the legal premise, though, involving what effect a certain Supreme Court case would have on the ownership of a screenplay written in the 1950’s. Comments welcome.
