Not so long ago, in the pre-Napster world, copyright was an obscure field, albeit one that viewed itself as the Cinderella of the law, glittering from its charmed association with authors, artists and composers. Copyright lawyers, a relatively small group who lunched at the Carnegie Deli, dined at Sardi’s and summered in the Catskills, shared a common love for and understanding of copyright’s lofty purposes and abstract intricacies. The field attracted vibrant, cultured personalities, including more than a few legendary women.
Although not part of as remunerative a field as patent or trademark law, copyright lawyers took solace in the knowledge that their area was more intellectually challenging and glamorous. Copyright lawyers also tended to be of a scholarly bent: the first U.S. copyright treatise, George Curtis’ “A Treatise on the Law of Copyright,” was published in 1847. This was followed in 1862 by William Ellsworth’s “A Copy-Right Manual.” Mr. Ellsworth was Noah Webster’s son-in-law and the son of Oliver Ellsworth, the third Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. He had previously been a congressman from Connecticut and was the principal proponent of the 1831 revision of the Copyright Act, which had, among other things, doubled the original term of copyright from 14 to 28 years.
