Perspective
Sep. 7, 2012
Could you copyright the West Coast Offense?
Football is a very innovative sport, and rules about copying have played almost no role in shaping that innovation. By Kal Raustiala and Christopher Sprigman
Football plays and formations, like most everything in this book, are not covered by copyright or patent law. Not that some haven't tried: in the 1980s James R. Smith applied for a copyright on his "I-bone" offensive formation. We can find no record of a Copyright Office registration (although they did grant a copyright to a book describing the I-bone). While, as we will explain in a moment, it might b...
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