Intellectual property (magic)

Intellectual rights to magic methods refers to the legal and ethical debate about the extent to which proprietary or exclusive rights may subsist in the methods or processes by which magic tricks or illusions are performed. It is a subject of some controversy.

On one side, many magicians argue that methods represent "intellectual property" and that publication or sharing of methods should be subject to strict codes developed by magicians' organizations. On the other side, a range of people argue that publication of information about methods should not be subject to restrictions because knowledge should be freely available. The sharing of magic methods with non-magicians or the open publication of methods is referred to in the magic community as "exposure" and many magicians react angrily to it.

While many magic tricks rely on traditional methods, there is also a continuing development and progress within the genre. Those who are performers and amateurs tend to take a very defensive stance against all "exposure", while those who are creators and originators tend to care more about recent works – works with living and identifiable creators.

There are a number of areas of law that might provide a basis for magicians to claim ownership of certain pieces of knowledge and to prevent exposure. Copyright, patent, trade secret and trademark law, are the primary sources of legal protection at issue on the topic. Each type of protection has its own limitations and loopholes.

Under the Berne Convention, member states are free to prescribe in their national legislation that copyright is automatically granted to a work only when it is "fixed", that is, written or recorded on some physical medium. In the U.S., copyright law only protects works that are fixed in a tangible medium of expression. Accordingly, some argue, the processes or movements required for a trick are not copyrightable within the U.S, but recordings, written descriptions, or photographs of such a performance may be copyrightable themselves.

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