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Intellectual Property Law Hybridization, Clark D. Asay
Intellectual Property Law Hybridization, Clark D. Asay
University of Colorado Law Review
Traditionally, patent and copyright laws have been viewed as separate bodies of law with distinct utilitarian goals. Conventional wisdom holds that patent law aims to incentivize the production of inventive ideas, while copyright focuses on protecting the original expression of ideas, but not the underlying ideas themselves. This customary divide between copyright and patent laws finds some support in the distinction between "authors" and "inventors," as well as that between "writings" and "discoveries," in the U.S. Constitution's Intellectual Property Clause. And Congress, courts, and scholars have largely perpetuated the divide in separately enacting, interpreting, and analyzing copyright and patent laws …