Please join us for our third IP & Tech Speaker Series event of the 2024 Spring semester! On Monday, March 18 at noon (Student Conference Center) Professor David Simon, associate professor of law at Northeastern University School of Law, will be discussing his work titled, Copyright’s Missing Personality.

Lunch will be provided. This is an in-person event.
 
Speaker
David Simon is an associate professor of law at Northeastern University School of Law, where he teaches Torts, Drug and Device Innovation, and Administrative Law. David has served on the law faculty at Harvard Law School, GW Law, and the University of Kansas School of Law. David’s research focuses on intellectual property and healthcare, including various issues related to FDA-regulated drugs and devices. His work has appeared in the Emory Law Journal, the Georgia Law Review, the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, the Journal of Law and the Biosciences, JAMA, Nature Biotechnology, and the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics. 
 
Abstract
This talk argues that one of copyright’s core doctrines that provides authors with noneconomic rights—moral rights—lacks an adequate philosophical justification. While most of the rights copyright law provides to authors are justified on economic theory, moral rights are typically justified based on “personality theory.” The central idea underlying personality theory is this: when an author creates a work, she invests her “personality” in it, thereby creating a special relationship between the author and the product that is deserving of protection. But there are two problems. First, personality theorists have not adequately defined personality, leaving open questions about what, exactly, we are worried about protecting. Second, even if personality is sufficiently defined, personality theorists frequently fail to explain why its investment in a work justifies special legal rights. David’s paper asks whether a better way to conceptualize moral rights is to start with personal or reputational interests the law already recognizes, like those in tort and trademark law. He concludes that while these provide helpful guidance on how to structure a moral rights regime, it is not clear they support creating one.