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90 St. John's L. Rev. 579 (2016)
Patent Law, Copyright Law, and the Girl Germs Effect

handle is hein.journals/stjohn90 and id is 597 raw text is: 








  PATENT LAW, COPYRIGHT LAW, AND THE
                 GIRL GERMS EFFECT

                           ANN BARTOWt


                           INTRODUCTION
     Inventors1 pursue patents and authors2 receive copyrights.
No special education is required for either endeavor, and nothing
precludes a person from being both an author and an inventor.
Inventors working on patentable industrial projects geared
toward commercial exploitation tend to be scientists or engineers.
Authors, with the exception of those writing computer code,3 tend
to be educated or trained in the creative arts, such as visual art,
performance art, music, dance, acting, creative writing, film
making, and architectural drawing. There is a well-warranted
societal supposition that most of the inventors of patentable
inventions are male.4 Assumptions about the genders of the
authors of remunerative commercially exploited copyrights may
be less rigid. Women authors are more broadly visible than
women inventors across most of the typical categories of
copyrightable works.


   t Director of the Franklin Pierce Center for Intellectual Property and Professor
of Law, University of New Hampshire School of Law. The author particularly thanks
Professor Jeremy Sheff for being the inspiration for this Essay, with gratitude also
for everyone who offered helpful comments and advice. This work is dedicated to
Casey Bartow-McKenney.
   ' 35 U.S.C. § 100(f) (2012) (The term 'inventor' means the individual or, if a
joint invention, the individuals collectively who invented or discovered the subject
matter of the invention.).
   2 17 U.S.C. § 102(a) (2012). Authors is the term used by the U.S. Copyright
Act to refer to people or entities who produce copyrightable original works of
authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later
developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise
communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device. Id.
   ' U.S. COPYRIGHT OFFICE, COPYRIGHT REGISTRATION   FOR COMPUTER
PROGRAMS (Aug. 2012), http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ61.pdf.
   4 Michelle Chen, 80 Percent of Patents Belong Solely to Men, THE NATION (Aug.
12, 2016), https://www.thenation.com/article/80-percent-of-patents-belong-solely-to-
men.

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