Making Sense of “Moral Rights”: Artists’ European-style Intellectual Property Protections Within the American System

Abstract

American intellectual property law, the conventional story tells us, essentially springs from economic concerns about encouraging the production and dissemination of valuable non-tangible goods. The United States Constitution’s explicit grant of power to Congress to regulate intellectual property is couched in those very terms: “The Congress shall have Power . . . To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”