What Is a Copyright Work?

Abstract

The work, which came into its own with the emergence of modern copyright law at the turn of the twentieth century, occupies a pivotal (but largely unexplored) position in copyright law. Focusing on the question of how copyright decides whether part of a work should be treated as a separate and distinct object, this Article looks at some of the techniques that copyright law uses to decide both what is a work and when a new work comes into being. The Article shows that in spite of the central role that the work plays in copyright doctrine the law is not well equipped to explain when a new work has come into being.