O’Connor @ProfSeanOConnor on Patented Electric Guitar Pickups and the Creation of Modern Music Genres

Sean M. O’Connor, University of Washington School of Law, is publishing Patented Electric Guitar Pickups and the Creation of Modern Music Genres in volume 23 of the George Mason Law Review (2016). Here is the abstract.

This Essay provides an overview of how patents played a core role in developing world-changing musical genres. This may be surprising, as normally copyright law is associated with incentivizing advances in the creative arts.But as this Conference’s theme and presentations emphasize, the whole range of intellectual property (“IP”), especially when viewed as a platform, supports innovation across the spectrum of human ingenuity and creativity. This Essay is also intended to be read in conjunction with a viewing of the live-music demonstration of how pickups transformed popular music, delivered at the Conference and available at the Center for Protection of Intellectual Property’s YouTube channel.

Download the essay from SSRN at the link.