Easterbrook on Copyright

Naming conventions for law books have always had a certain chunky reductionism to them. Wigmore on Evidence. Corbin on Contracts. Prosser on Torts. You undoubtedly see the pattern. That brings us to Easterbrook on Copyright. Go to any reputable law library and scan the shelves for the great copyright treatises. You will find Nimmer on Copyright (and not just one generation but two, as son David has stepped into father Melville’s shoes). If you like your treatises a little smaller, you will undoubtedly turn to Goldstein on Copyright. And if you are a digital sort, you will head to Westlaw and search Patry on Copyright. But look as you will, you will not find Easterbrook on Copyright. Of course, Easterbrook is not a copyright scholar so it hardly seems fair to point out that he did not write a treatise on the subject. The heart of his academic work was antitrust, securities, and corporate law, not intellectual property. Generations of students, law professors, and practicing lawyers have read those works with care, and they remain influential today. But students are not reading Easterbrook on Copyright. It just does not exist.

But you have to dig deeper. Once you turn to the copyright casebooks, you see how widely you have missed the mark.