"The proposed book will present an interdisciplinary study of the history of copyright law with a focus on the historical development of the object of protection. The book analyses British, French, and Danish copyright law in order to examine the Anglo-American copyright system, the Continental authorial rights system and the Scandinavian system which is influenced by both systems. The book explores several ways in which copyright law has changed over time in terms of the object of protection. This includes the increasing number of types of work accorded copyright protection, the introduction of concept of the '(original) work' into most national copyright acts as the general legal term for the object of protection in the early twentieth century, and the broadening of the definition of infringement as a result of defining the object of copyright as an intangible entity.

The first part of the book contains a discussion of how, in early copyright law, printed matter was the object of protectionleading to a particular technological understanding of a 'copy', namely one that derived from printing. The early metaphysical debates on the nature of intangible property will also be looked into, as will the series of eighteenth century copyright acts introducing new subject matter in British, French and Danish law. The second part of the book discusses the general change in the conceptual framework of copyright law in the nineteenth century in British and Continental law and the introduction of the elastic concept of the 'work' as the object of protection in distinction to 'copy' as its 'mere' material instantiation. The terminological cross-fertilization between the diverse legal traditions and the impact of philosophical-aesthetic discourse on legal language will be reviewed, in particular the term "reproduction.

While the third part focuses on the particular problems that have emerged in relation to the inclusion of design as protectable by copyright"--

"The twentieth and twenty-first centuries have seen a number of pressing developments in copyright law, including an increase in the number of types of work accorded copyright protection, the introduction of the concept of the 'original work' into national copyright acts, and the possibility to define the object of copyright as an intangible entity. This book presents an interdisciplinary study of the history of copyright law and the development of the object of protection. Taking British, French, and Danish copyright law as key examples, the book examines the legal history and status of copyright law. Part 1 of the book explores early copyright law, including the technological understanding of a printed 'copy', and early metaphysical debates on the nature of intangible property. In Part 2, The book moves on to discuss the introduction of the elastic concept of the 'work' as the object of protection and its distinction to 'copy' as its 'mere' material instantiation. Part 3 finally examines the particular emergent problems in relation to the inclusion of design as protectable by copyright. In its examination of terminological cross-fertilization between the diverse legal traditions and the impact of philosophical discourse on legal language, this interdisciplinary book will be of great interest to scholars and students of intellectual property law, literary studies, and cultural theory"--