Some Frankenstein and Copyright @dkluft

Another law and pop culture post from David Kluft at Foley & Hoag, this time on Frankenstein and Copyright. 

Great information about Mary Shelley’s sale of the copyright of the novel for only thirty pounds, and the link between Big Frank and the famous Sony Corp. v. Universal City Studios decision that allowed us to tape all those shows off the air. Universal Studies pops up in other Frankenstein-related cases as well, including questions over film depictions of the monster. 

For more about Frankenstein and the law, see the short bibliography below.

Jonathan H. Grossman, The Art of Alibi: English Law Courts and the Novel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).

William P. MacNeil, The Monstrous Body of the law: Wollstonecraft vs. Shelley, 12 Australian Feminist Law Journal 21-40 (1999).

Tim Marshall, “Frankenstein” and the 1832 Anatomy Act,  in Gothick Origins and Innovations (Allan Lloyd Smith and Victor Sage, eds.,  Amsterdam/Atlanta, Rodopi, 1994).

Mark A. McCutcheon, Techno, “Frankenstein,” and Copyright, 26 Popular Music 259-280 (May 2007).

D. Punter, Gothic Pathologies: The Text, the Body and the Law (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 1998).

Diana Reese, A Troubled Legacy: Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and the Inheritance of Human Rights, 96 Representations 48-72 (Fall 2006).