Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Authors At Work: The Origins Of The Work-For-Hire Doctrine, Catherine L. Fisk

Catherine Fisk

The death of the author was announced in literary circles quite some time ago. Rumors of the author's demise were, in my view, premature. The author isn't dead; he just got a job. Unfortunately, as if in a company-man dystopia, he has been subsumed into the identity of his corporate employer. His disappearance is by now almost complete. Although he has gone on writing, the corporation has become the author of his oeuvre. Yet the desire both to create and to be recognized as a creator is irrepressible. The creative process is both inherently individual and inescapably social. So even …