Intellectual Property Law and the History of the Narrative-Based Franchise

FAIN: FA-251961-17

Gregory Steirer
Dickinson College (Carlisle, PA 17013-2896)

Completion of a book-length study of the impact of intellectual property law on narrative-based franchises in film, television, and other media.

Over the last decade, the narrative-based franchise has come to be seen as one of the twentieth-first century’s paradigmatic storytelling forms. Narrative Inc. argues that in order to understand the significance of this form, we must situate it within the practice of intellectual property law. This project thus offers a dual history of narrative-based franchise production and intellectual property law in the United States, beginning in the early twentieth century and ending in the present-day. Arguing that changes in the franchise and the law have been mutually constitutive, each simultaneously the product and cause of the other, I trace how the logic of the franchise as a narrative form has changed in tandem with that of copyright, trademark, and unfair competition law. Narrative Inc. focuses on a series of specific franchises, demonstrating how their production was bound up—often quite literally through lawsuits—with the discourse and practice of intellectual property law.

Associated Products

The First Sale Doctrine and U.S. Media Distribution (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: The First Sale Doctrine and U.S. Media Distribution
Author: Gregory Steirer
Abstract: In 1909, the U.S Supreme Court, echoing the typical reasoning of earlier U.S. and British legal rulings regarding the distribution of media goods, held that a copyright holder’s distribution rights for any single copy of a media good are exhausted upon the first sale of that copy. Later codified as “The First Sale Doctrine,” this legal principle severely limited the ability of publishers and other content owners to control how the media goods they sold in the United States were priced, distributed, and consumed. This paper argues that the First Sale Doctrine has been the legal bedrock for two key features of twentieth-century media distribution in the U.S.: the retail store and what is usually called the secondary (ie. used) market. In enabling these institutions, the Doctrine has provided consumers broader and cheaper access to media goods while also fostering new forms of entrepreneurial activity and participatory culture. Drawing from legal cases, congressional hearings, and trade articles, this paper also demonstrates and accounts for the Doctrine’s surprising resilience throughout the twentieth century, during which time it had been the object of numerous attempts by American media companies to undermine or dismantle it. The paper concludes with an analysis of the Doctrine’s continued meaning and validity during the twenty-first century, particularly with respect to new digital distribution systems and restrictive Terms of Service licenses. Though the paper’s main emphasis is U.S. copyright law and distribution systems, brief comparative reference will also be made to Europe’s slightly different approach to the same legal issue.
Date: 04/19/2018
Primary URL: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/cmci/eventrecords/2017-18/Media-Industries-Conference-2018.aspx
Primary URL Description: Conference website
Conference Name: Media Industries Conference, 2018

After the First Sale: The Impact of the United States' First Sale Doctrine on the Evolution of Modern Media Distribution Systems (Book Section)
Title: After the First Sale: The Impact of the United States' First Sale Doctrine on the Evolution of Modern Media Distribution Systems
Author: Gregory Steirer
Editor: Derek Johnson
Editor: Derek Herbert
Abstract: This chapter argues that the First Sale Doctrine has been the legal bedrock for two key features of twentieth-century media distribution in the U.S.: the retail store and what is usually called the secondary (ie. used) market. In enabling these institutions, the Doctrine has provided consumers broader and cheaper access to media goods while also fostering new forms of entrepreneurial activity and participatory culture. Drawing from legal cases, congressional hearings, and trade articles, this chapter also demonstrates and accounts for the Doctrine’s surprising resilience throughout the twentieth century, during which time it had been the object of numerous attempts by American media companies to undermine or dismantle it. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the Doctrine’s continued meaning and validity during the twenty-first century, particularly with respect to new digital distribution systems and restrictive Terms of Service licenses.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: https://www.worldcat.org/title/point-of-sale-analyzing-media-retail/oclc/1100000780
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Book Title: Point of Sale: Analyzing Media Retail
ISBN: 978-0813595535

Hulu, Streaming, and the Contemporary Television Ecosystem (Article)
Title: Hulu, Streaming, and the Contemporary Television Ecosystem
Author: Greg Steirer
Author: Kevin Sanson
Abstract: In this essay, we take up three distinctive features of the US-based subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) platform Hulu: its ownership structure, its business deals, and its televisual aesthetics. Although there are substantial overlaps among these categories, we approach each of them separately so as to better enable us to link our analyses to some of the key questions and concerns about what contemporary television has become and how it should best be studied. By inserting Hulu into a conversation about today’s television ecosystem – a context from which it has been absent for too long – we purposefully broaden scholarly debates about SVOD platforms beyond that of Netflix and Amazon to reconsider some of the emergent conventions or common-sense norms that currently underpin our understanding of television in the Internet era. In the end, we argue streaming television is a multi-sited, quasi-iterative, and rapidly evolving marketplace, in which legacy practices persist alongside and often in competition with new modes of production, dissemination, and consumption.
Year: 2019
Primary URL: http://doi.org/ 10.1177/0163443718823144.
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Media, Culture, and Society

The American Comic Book Industry and Hollywood (Book)
Title: The American Comic Book Industry and Hollywood
Author: Greg Steirer
Author: Alisa Perren
Abstract: The American Comic Book Industry and Hollywood traces the evolving relationship between the American comic book industry and Hollywood from the launch of X-Men, Spider-Man, and Smallville in the early 2000s through the ascent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Arrowverse, and the Walking Dead Universe in the 2010s. Perren and Steirer illustrate how the American comic book industry simultaneously has functioned throughout the first two decades of the twenty-first century as a relatively self-contained business characterized by its own organizational structures, business models, managerial discourses, production cultures, and professional identities even as it has remained dependent on Hollywood for revenue from IP licensing. The authors' expansive view of the industry includes not only a discussion of the “Big Two,” Marvel/Disney and DC Comics/Time Warner, but also a survey of the larger comics ecosystem. Other key industry players, including independent publishers BOOM! Studios, IDW, and Image, digital distributor ComiXology, and management-production company Circle of Confusion, all receive attention. Drawing from interviews, fieldwork, archival research, and trade analysis, The American Comic Book Industry and Hollywood provides a road map to understanding the operations of the comic book industry while also offering new models for undertaking trans- and inter-industrial analysis.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/american-comic-book-industry-and-hollywood-9781844579419/
Publisher: Bloomsbury / BFI
Type: Multi-author monograph
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Legal Stories: Narrative-based Property Development in the Modern Copyright Era (Book)
Title: Legal Stories: Narrative-based Property Development in the Modern Copyright Era
Author: Gregory Steirer
Abstract: Tracing the emergence of what the media industries today call transmedia, story worlds, and narrative franchises, Legal Stories provides a dual history of copyright law and narrative-based media development between the Copyright Act of 1909 and the Copyright Act of 1976. Drawing on archival material, including legal case files, and employing the principles of actor-network theory, Gregory Steirer demonstrates how the meaning and form of narrative-based property in the twentieth century was integral to the letter and practice of intellectual property law during this time. Steirer’s expansive view of intellectual property law encompasses not only statutes and judicial opinions, but also the everyday practices and productions of authors, editors, fans, and other legal laypersons. The result is a history of the law as improvisatory and accident-prone, taking place as often outside the courtroom as inside, and shaped as much by laypersons as lawyers. Through the examination of influential legal disputes involving early properties such as Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade, H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, and Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Barbarian, Steirer provides a ground’s eye view of how copyright law has operated and evolved in practice.
Year: 2024
Primary URL: https://search.worldcat.org/title/1391433857
Primary URL Description: Worldcat.org
Secondary URL: https://press.umich.edu/Books/L/Legal-Stories2
Secondary URL Description: Publisher website
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780472076826
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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