Autor, autorska prava i originalnost: Invencija ili inovacija
Author, Copyright and Originality: Intervention or Innovation

Summary/Abstract: The article gives an overview and critique of one of the approaches in interpretations of the relationship between originality and copyright and its consequences for development and supposed emergence of the category of author. Certain interpretations ascribe to Romanticism key-role in development of the notion of originality that countered tradition and which became the basis for the conception of »immaterial« intellectual property. Contrary to these approaches, the article accedes to an opposed view and tries to draw attention to the weak points in arguments that link Romantic originality with intellectual property. One of the examples which complicates image of the clear-cut historical change is that, as historians of law and copyright have shown, the notion of »immaterial property« has emerged already by the end of the Middle Ages, although not related at once to writing and publishing. In addition, it is shown in the article how inconsistent and not enough defined use of the notion of »originality« causes confusion and paves the way for some doubtful conclusions such as, for example, that copyright laws have codified Romantic concept of originality, while there is really no significant difference between originality as it was understood before Romanticism and originality as it is conceived in contemporary copyright laws. Therefore the article concludes with favouring the view which regards historical change as a slow transformation, unlike some of the presented interpretations which are seeking from the past corroboration for their methodological assumptions about abrupt and frontal departures from tradition

• Details
• Contents