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Richardson, Megan; Ricketson, Sam --- "Introduction" [2017] ELECD 294; in Richardson, Megan; Ricketson, Sam (eds), "Research Handbook on Intellectual Property in Media and Entertainment" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2017) 1

Book Title: Research Handbook on Intellectual Property in Media and Entertainment

Editor(s): Richardson, Megan; Ricketson, Sam

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781784710781

Section Title: Introduction

Author(s): Richardson, Megan; Ricketson, Sam

Number of pages: 9

Extract:

Introduction
Megan Richardson and Sam Ricketson



The media and entertainment industries do not uniformly depend on
intellectual property rights (as we currently know them). The first English
newspapers were published in the century before the Statute of Anne
1710 gave authors the prospect of copyright in their works;1 and theatre
performances from William Shakespeare's `King's Men' were a feature
of everyday life in the time of the Tudors.2 Even now, as one of us points
out in an early chapter for this book,3 much material of central import-
ance to media and entertainment ­ namely `news of the day' ­ is
exempted from copyright protection under the terms of the Berne
Convention,4 even if expressions of news may be protected as a matter of
copyright and in some US states a narrowly cast `hot news' doctrine for


1
Although a complex system of regulation was administered through the
licensing practices of the Stationers' Company: see Seaton Siebert, Fredrick,
Freedom of the Press in England, 1476­1776 (University of Illinois Press,
Urbana 1965) 107­61; Harris, Michael, `The Structure, Ownership and Control
of the Press' in Boyce, George, James Curran and Pauline Wingate (eds),
Newspaper History From the 17th Century to the Present Day (Constable and
Sage, London and Beverly Hills CA 1978) ch.4.
2
Although theatre was highly regulated in other ways, including by the
licensing of plays for performance by the Master of the Revels, an official of the
Lord Chamberlain. In addition, the ...