ABSTRACT
Copyright law grants ownership rights to only certain kinds of “things” – generally speaking, artistic and cultural works. The pendulum of control swung away from publishers and towards the authors themselves. In 1710, England’s parliament passed what is known as the Statute of Anne, the first law that gave authors a governmentally recognized and enforceable copyright in their works. One of the legal notions the Founding Fathers chose to incorporate into the Constitution was copyright. Congress has indeed exercised its Constitutional prerogative and passed various copyright laws from time to time. During the twentieth century, Congress passed two major overhauls of copyright law, in 1909 and then again in 1976. Copyright law only covers a certain portion of what people create. Copyright covers artistic and cultural endeavors, while patent law, a wholly different and complicated subject, covers what can be broadly called inventions and the products derived from them.
