Creativity without Law: Challenging the Assumptions of Intellectual Property - Softcover

Kate Darling is Research Specialist at the MIT Media Lab, where she advises on intellectual property issues and researches the intersection of technology, law, and society.

"This important collection of case studies adds significantly to the emerging body of empirical evidence that challenges IP’s orthodoxy.  Creativity and innovation do not necessarily depend on copyrights and patents.  The book documents the fact that community self-governance can produce and sustain creative production across a broad range of subject matter.  Eclecticism powers the book.  The fascinating, provocative, and entertaining cases here range from more traditional IP-focused creative domains like film and fiction to creative fields operating beyond IP, like cuisine and medical practice, to outsider creative groups that have rejected IP, like tattoo artists and roller derby participants."-Michael Madison,Professor of Law, University of Pittsburgh

"For years, physicists insisted bumble bees couldn’t fly. And yet, the laws of physics notwithstanding, bumblebees flew. Likewise, for years, IP lawyers have insisted that without strong IP protection, creativity cannot flourish. IP lawyers: meet the bumblebee. In this beautifully written and powerfully structured collection, the best of IP’s scholars show that actual complexity of creativity, and its inspiration."-Lawrence Lessig,Roy L. Furman Professor of Law and Leadership, Harvard Law School

"Understanding how and why people create is central to the project of IP.  This important new book catalogs the many ways in which people create without the benefit of IP law.  One can find theories of copyright and creativity elsewhere.  Here you will find real-world evidence of how people are creating without, and even despite, IP law."-Mark A. Lemley,William H. Neukom Professor, Stanford Law School

“This volume expands our understanding of organic systems of protection designed to preserve incentives for innovation in IP’s negative spaces. It will...undoubtedly provoke much debate, stimulate new research, and give rise to some interesting future conferences.”-Journal of Economic Literature