Copyright, Privacy and Publicity

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
• Convenor and tutor: Henrique Carvalho
• Assessment: a 1000-word mid-term formative essay plan (0%) and 4000-word research essay (100%)

How can culture be owned? Answering this question involves learning the techniques with which intellectual property law transforms cultural expressions into items of property and critically assessing what happens to culture once it is dealt with as a transactable commodity. This module is designed to introduce you to the law of copyright, privacy and passing off and to stimulate discussion about the place of intellectual property law within the cultural industries. This option is aimed at students on the LLM International Intellectual Property who lack a background in UK intellectual property law; but is equally open to any students interested in learning about the legal infrastructure of the arts and entertainment sector.

Indicative module syllabus

• Conceptual foundations of intellectual property law
• Copyright: context and history; subject matter; authorship and ownership; infringement and defences
• Privacy and publicity: the politics of celebrity; misuse of private information; false endorsement and character merchandising

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• articulate the key concepts and principles of copyright law, misuse of private information and passing off
• demonstrate a theoretically informed understanding of techniques used to identify the subject matter in these areas of intellectual property law
• critique the discontinuities between cultural practices and their representation in legal discourse
• critique the commodification of personality by public uses of a person’s image.