A THEORY OF COPYRIGHT AUTHORSHIP

The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to extend copyright protection to "Authors" for their "Writings." And the current Copyright Act manifests this power by granting copyrights to "original works of authorship." Yet despite the obvious centrality of the concepts of authorship and writings to copyright law, courts and scholars are only beginning to pay them significant attention. Compared with other parts of the Constitution, including the term "speech" in the First Amendment or the term "commerce" elsewhere in Article I, the central terms of the copyright power have received little constitutional interpretation. Copyright jurisprudence did not begin with a theory of authorship, and it has not worked one out.