Copyright et propriété intellectuelle Retour sur un vieux débat, l'exemple américain

Nowadays, copyright is often seen as a form of "property right", and more particularly as "intellectual property". In this way, copyright is (sometimes explicitly) linked to a wider notion of property, when it is, in fact, little more than a bundle of entitlements attributed to a particular author. In practice, copyright can be applied to a variety of different things, ranging from books to labels on canned goods, and encompassing films, mime acts, software, musical recordings, etc. At the same time, the term "author" is more readily applied to companies than to people. Originally it was simply a means of regulating one particular industry (publishing and the book-trade) by giving authors temporary print rights. However, little by little the meaning of copyright has changed and this article explores such change in the context of the United States. It looks at the situation in the early 19th Century (with a law dating from 1790, etc.) and opposing ideas of copyright at the time, including debates over "common law perpetual copyright". Over the 19th Century, jurisprudence on the matter progressively changed and constructed a wider notion of rights attributed according to a new definition of artistic works as "intellectual creation" - a sort of intangible and non-material good, ownership of which gave exclusive rights over the control and usufruct of a whole range of market values and derivative markets. This conception underpins the redrafting of the law in 1909, which via a number of legal fictions and targeted legal frameworks (work-for-hire, etc.), allowed for the integration of the emergent new culture industries whose rise and rise would mark the 20th Century.