The piracy paradox revisited

Citation: Kal Raustiala, Christopher Sprigman (2009) The piracy paradox revisited. Stanford Law Review (RSS)
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Tagged: Business (RSS) piracy paradox (RSS), intellectual property (RSS), fashion (RSS), copying (RSS)

Summary

Raustiala and Sprigman's article is a return to the basic arguments of their earlier work The piracy paradox and a response to an article, published in the same issue of Stanford Law Review, The law, culture, and economics of fashion by Scott Hemphill and Jeannie Suk. Hemphill and Suk's article is, at least in part, a response their article and this can be read, at least in part, as a rebuttal.

Much of the article is a rehashing and revisiting of the arguments in The piracy paradox. In terms of engagement with the new article, Raustiala and Sprigman agree, on the whole, with Hemphill and Suk but depart strongly from them when it comes to issues around the policy implications of their analysis. They suggest that their definition of copying is different (and more consistent with US copyright law), that Hemphill and Suk understate the diversity of consumer interests in fashion goods in a way that, if adjusted for, may make the new model conform to the policy recommendations of the authors of this piece, and that the authors have a different view of the political economy of IP more generally, specifically when it is applied to fashion.

The large majority of the article is devoted to questions of how the major conclusions from the piracy paradox should be put into practice in the law and the implications of different policy positions -- an set of questions that received surprisingly little attention in the original article.