By Jacob Loshin

J.D., 2007, Yale Law School

7/25/07

--WORKING DRAFT--

Please send any reactions or comments to: Jacob.Loshin@gmail.com

Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1005564

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For centuries, magicians have sought to tame the laws of nature. They have made pebbles

jump from place to place, pulled rabbits from hats, made canes dance, turned doves into

handkerchiefs, plucked cards and coins from thin air, levitated their assistants in midair, sawed

ladies in half, and made nearly everything disappear—from coins to elephants to the Statue of

course, this enchanting control over the laws of nature has usually also been presented with a

knowing wink of the eye. These magicians are not demigods, but rather performers and

entertainers who we ask to suspend our disbelief by way of illusion, artifice, and prestidigitation.

“[I]t is the very trickery that pleases me,” Seneca wrote long ago. “But show me how the trick is

world around them, for our amusement, depends on their ability to control the ideas and methods

of their art—the hidden “trickery” that makes magic possible.

Yet, despite the overwhelming importance of this intellectual property to the magic

community, the law of intellectual property (“IP”) offers magicians very little assistance.

Magicians labor in what has come to be known as IP’s “negative space,” an area of creative

from such negative spaces, since the dynamics of low-IP industries can inform views about the

nature and necessity of IP protections in more frequently discussed high-IP industries. So far,

scholars have begun to glean insights from the fashion industry and the culinary industry, two

1917).

paper furthers the effort by studying the unique dynamics of another negative space—the

community of professional and amateur performing magicians. Although a few legal scholars

workings there. Hence, for the first time, this paper pulls back the curtain, a bit, on the world of

magic.

But not too much. You will not find here the secrets to how magicians perform their

many feats of mystery. Sorry, tough luck. This paper will, however, reveal the secret to a

different sort of mystery. The standard economic theory of intellectual property holds that law

must delimit and enforce property rights in order to promote innovation. Without such legal

protection, creators lack an incentive to invest in future innovation. After all, why develop and

invest in an idea if you know that it can be used by a competitor without legal consequence? If

intellectual property law does not protect ideas, the standard theory thus predicts sluggish

innovation. Yet, while magicians have few legal rights to their intellectual property, innovation

nevertheless seems to thrive.

This mystery has been found in IP’s other negative spaces as well. In fashion, for

instance, two scholars have observed the mystery and explained it by arguing that top designers

actually want their designs to be copied so that high-fashion designers can secure the benefits of

expression—such as fashions, new words and slogans, jokes and magic tricks, and the food industry—have

flourished in the absence of protection.”).

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passé and create demand for new high-fashion designs from the top, fueling a cycle of

continuous demand. Some might seize on this explanation as disproof of the traditional economic

theory of IP, illustrating how innovation does not need intellectual property after all. Yet, this

paper discovers that the secret to the mystery is different for magicians than it is for fashionistas.

The magicians’ secret lies not in the desire for low-IP, but rather in an alternative to it. This

paper illustrates how the magic community has developed a unique set of informal norms and

sanctions for violators, which protect intellectual property in the absence of law. Hence, in the

magic community, innovation does in fact need intellectual property. But it does not necessarily

This paper proceeds in four parts. Part I offers an introduction to the world of magic and

outlines the innovation dynamics at play in the magic community. Part II then explores the

application of intellectual property law to magic, illustrating how copyright, patent, and trade

secret law afford precious little protection for magicians’ most valuable intellectual property.

Part III explains the norm-based intellectual property system that governs the magic community

in the absence of law. Finally, Part IV discusses what lessons IP scholars might draw from this

case study of the magic community, stressing the idiosyncratic nature of IP’s negative spaces and

the promising but fragile nature of norm-based alternatives to IP law.

other scholars have since discovered the powerful influence of social norms in a variety of other property-law

influence of norms on scientific researchers).

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For as long as man has lived within the constraints imposed upon him by worldly

existence, magicians have satisfied a yearning to explain those constraints, and then to break free

satisfies may be nearly as strong as that of its predecessor. Magic has its roots in the earliest

tribal societies, where it began as a supernatural practice invoked by religious leaders, mystics,

medicine men, and the like. Gradually, this supernatural magic gave way to entertainment magic,

All along, magic has struggled for respectability even as it has garnered constant

Athenian, recalled being “almost speechless” as he watched a magician display several white

hospitality, worrying, “We should never be able to catch him in his tricks, and he would steal

for much of its history, magic’s practitioners—supernatural and secular alike—have been loners,

outcasts, and miscreants.

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In time, however, magic evolved from the work of an atomistic collection of loners into

the craft of a more cohesive industry. This Part takes a brief and selective tour through the

history of magic, illustrating the innovation dynamics at work in the magic industry—how

magic’s mysteries and illusions originate and evolve over time. We will observe how magicians

benefit from sharing their ideas, but also how they are threatened by the misuse of them. We will

see how the magic industry’s “innovation ecology” is animated by the need to balance the

against which intellectual property rights can be assessed.

By the late nineteenth century, entertainment magic had come into full bloom as a

theatrical art. In these vaudeville days, which stretched into the early twentieth century,

magicians brought large crowds to theatres and music halls on multiple continents. From New

York’s colossal Hippodrome Theatre to England’s St. George’s Hall and Royal Polytechnic,

vaudeville-era magicians vied to present the next “world’s greatest illusion.” In this time before

television and the internet, traveling magicians would crisscross the globe, bringing their shows

to small towns and big cities alike. There was considerable money to be earned, fame to be

achieved, and social respect to be gained. And this heady time would become magic’s greatest

period of creativity and innovation. Although considerable advantage accrued to those magicians

who invented new ideas and performed them exclusively, this period of innovation also

coincided with the rise of institutions that enabled magicians to share their ideas with one

another. And such institutions remain in place today.

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for new tricks, make adaptations to old ones, and share anecdotes, advice, and other information

about their craft. The vaudeville era also saw the rise of magic books. The books were often

written by well-known magicians, who would share the tricks that they had invented and refined

over the course of their performing careers. Today this practice continues, and most of the books

are issued by specialty publishing houses that cater to the magic community. The heady

vaudeville days also gave rise to magic manufacturers, dealers, and retail “emporiums,” which

sold specialty apparatus and “gimmicks” to magicians for use in their performances. Today, a

“magic shop” can be found in almost every major city, and many more sell their wares through

the mail and online.

Finally, the vaudeville era spawned organizations and networks that connected magicians

with each other. In 1902, the Society of American Magicians was born, and Harry Houdini

became one of its first presidents. In 1905, London’s Magic Circle formed, and the International

Brotherhood of Magicians followed soon after. Today, these organizations support a vibrant

network of magicians who come together frequently for large conventions, exhibitions, practicesessions,

and lectures. More informal gatherings and clubs connect magicians as well. And the

organizations and gatherings vary in their exclusivity. Not just anyone can join Hollywood’s

Magic Castle club or attend Eugene Burger’s Mystery School, and only a select few get invited

artists. Here’s what it takes to snag an invite:

You must have two sponsors who have attended a 4F convention before and are willing to stick their necks

out for you. . . . First-timers are expected to perform and you must do at least one trick . . . . After you

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By way of trade journals, books, dealers, and organizations, ideas flow freely and

actively within the magic community. Often, an innovative magician will keep a new idea to

herself as part of her performing repertoire, sharing the secret with the wider community of

magicians after enjoying its exclusive use for a while. Magicians seek out the latest trick or

clever new technique to add to their acts. The better magicians try to improve the new tricks they

learn, and adapt them to fit their own performing style. Within the magic community, a certain

prestige and renown attaches to those innovative magicians who share clever new inventions

with their magic brethren. Indeed, among magicians, Jim Steinmeyer and John Gaughan tend to

garner more respect and admiration than household name David Copperfield. The former invent

and design illusions which have been performed by the latter. Many seasoned magicians take

pride in sharing their modus operandi with the next generation of magicians. Renowned

nineteenth century French magician Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin, in one of the best and most

influential magic books ever written, dedicated his work “to my future brethren in the magic

This evolutionary process of invention, sharing, and gradual refinement has improved

many tricks over ensuing decades and even centuries. Indeed, some magicians believe that

genuinely original inventions remain quite rare. Nevil Maskelyne, one of magic’s greatest—and

ironically, most innovative—old masters, claimed, “The difficulty of producing a new magical

become a regular attendee you MUST be ready to perform at every convention if you are asked within 5-6

minutes. . . . Your first time attendance does not guarantee you a place for the next year’s convention. You

are on probation the first year and if you receive an invitation for the next year it means you were accepted by

your peers for future 4Fs.

html.

2006).

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certainly an overstatement, but it did capture a certain truth. Magicians have been performing the

same sorts of effects—causing things to float, appear, vanish, transport, or transmute—for

generations. And their methods have often relied on the same basic principles of visual, physical,

and psychological artifice. Yet, within this broad frame, magic has seen a considerable amount

of innovation. Much like innovation in scientific research, innovation in magic is often

less detectable, or a an old method will be improved by a psychological subtlety in a new

presentation.

Some of today’s best known tricks have resulted from this long, accretive process. Take,

for instance, the “cups and balls” trick, which is one of magic’s oldest and was the trick that so

astounded Alciphron the Athenian in ancient Greece. The trick is deceptively simple. A magician

displays a set of three cups and three balls. When covered by the cups, the balls appear,

disappear, multiply, and jump mysteriously from cup to cup. The finale usually involves making

something entirely improbable appear under the cups—from larger balls to live baby chicks, and

beyond. Once one knows the various methods, the trick is fairly easy to perform poorly but

extremely difficult to perform well. Although the basic trick has been around for centuries, there

are as many versions of it as there are magicians who perform it. Indeed, mastering and adapting

the cups and balls trick has become something of a rite of passage for aspiring sleight-of-hand

artists.

The famous “Metamorphosis” illusion offers a second example of gradual innovation,

this time on a larger scale. Nineteenth century magician John Nevil Maskelyne invented

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Metamorphosis, but Harry Houdini popularized it. Houdini would be tied up, put inside a cloth

sack, and locked inside a heavy trunk. His wife, Bess, would then pull a curtain around the trunk.

She would walk behind the curtain and clap her hands three times, at which point the curtain

would fall to reveal Houdini standing where his wife had been. Houdini unlocked the trunk and

revealed his wife to be tied up inside. This was an impressive illusion, but it was nothing

compared to the jaw-dropping version of the same trick performed today by the magical duo

known as the Pendragons. Where Houdini took at least three seconds to metamorphose, the

Pendragons do it in a millisecond. Literally. Charlotte Pendragon stands on top of the trunk and

throws a drape in front of her. Before the drape can fall a few feet toward the floor, she has

curiosity in Houdini’s hands became a downright miracle in the hands of the Pendragons.

Of course, not all magic secrets are created equal. Secrets and ideas flow freely and

actively among magicians, but sharing tends to occur on different levels. Magician Jim

Steinmeyer explains it well:

To really understand magic, you need to nudge past the tyros at the magic shop and sidle

up to the old professionals standing in the corner, who aren’t interested in the five-dollar

plastic envelopes stuffed with instructions, but are whispering in a weird sort of

shorthand—the names of past masters, the precise moment they chose to ‘accidentally’

drop a silk handkerchief on the stage and pick it up, or the particular bend in their thumb

Although surely an oversimplification, we can view the sharing of secrets as occurring along

three distinct channels. First there are the cheap plastic tricks sold in magic and novelty shops,

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included in children’s “magic sets,” or taught in short books with titles like “Ten Easy Card

Tricks to Amuse Your Friends.” These tricks tend to be easy to find, easy to do, and not very

good. We might label this “popular magic.” Second is the large mass of secrets and routines

shared among serious magicians in books and lectures, on instructional videos, at conventions,

and in magic clubs. These tend to be magicians’ bread and butter, and many of the tricks have

been shared among magicians for ages, often improved upon with each successive generation.

They tend to be used by professionals, as well as learned and practiced by amateur enthusiasts.

These secrets could be labeled “common magic.” Finally, the third channel is more informal, and

it involves select sharing of the really good and innovative stuff among the magic world’s top

performers. We might call this “proprietary magic.” These three kinds of secrets fall along a bell

curve distribution, with common magic predominating in the middle and popular and proprietary

magic making up a smaller part of the whole on either end.

Although much innovation has been spurred along through sharing, magicians take a less

charitable view of those who steal other magicians’ ideas without permission. And from time to

time, stealing has caused some high-profile spats. In the late 1870s, magician Buatier deKolta

performed a memorable trick on the stages of Paris whereby he produced a copious number of

paper flowers from inside a previously empty piece of rolled up paper. On one night at the Eden

Theatre, a draft of wind carried some of the paper flowers onto the floor in front of the stage.

Seizing the opportunity, a magician in the audience picked up a flower and rushed out of the

theatre. The flower’s ingenious design circulated among magicians, and many others were soon

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performing deKolta’s signature trick. Today, any magician can purchase “deKolta flowers” for a

Yet, perhaps the most infamous instance of espionage and skullduggery in the magic

community surrounds one of magic’s most well-known illusions: the “floating lady.” The

levitation trick had been around for ages, but Maskelyne invented a brilliantly revolutionary

method of doing it. The lady would lay down in the middle of the stage, away from the curtains

and illuminated in bright light. Slowly she would levitate high above the stage, and Maskelyne

would pass a hoop around her to show that nothing was holding her up. Maskelyne’s levitation

badly fooled all of the magicians who watched it. Jim Steinmeyer has called it the “closest thing

famous Dutch magician David Tobias Bamberg admitted, “[W]hat I saw today is beyond any

Harry Kellar, a well-known American magician, matched Bamberg’s surprise with equal parts of

jealousy. Kellar attended many of Maskelyne’s shows, and sat in different parts of the audience

in an effort to discover Maskelyne’s secret, all to no avail. Finally, Kellar sat in the very front of

the theatre and rushed up onto the stage during the levitation. He glimpsed the mechanism from

the stage, and then quickly fled the theatre.

Unfortunately for Kellar, however, the glimpse was not enough. He saw how the illusion

worked, but he did not learn enough to be able to reproduce it. Maskelyne knew this and figured

that Kellar would try to learn the secret from one of Maskelyne’s assistants. So Maskelyne

recruited his own double-agent and coached him to supply Kellar with fake drawings of how the

illusion worked. Yet, Kellar got the better of Maskelyne by recruiting a different spy, one of

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Maskelyne’s most trusted assistants. Kellar enticed the assistant, an aspiring grand illusionist

himself, by promising him a career as Kellar’s successor in America. The two conspired for over

a year while the treacherous assistant continued to work for Maskelyne and while Kellar

clandestinely built the apparatus. The assistant soon departed for America, and Kellar began to

show off the pilfered illusion in January of 1904. The program for Kellar’s show bragged that the

levitation was the “sensational marvel of the twentieth century and the crowning achievement of

learned of the theft, but the anger gave way to a worry that Kellar might have managed to

improve the illusion. Thus, Maskelyne paid someone in America to sneak backstage and

photograph Kellar’s apparatus so that Maskelyne could study it. Finally, in a last ironic twist,

magician Charles Carter stole Kellar’s stolen secret yet again, and incorporated it into his own

show to Kellar’s dismay.

Despite the intrigue of the levitation affair, it may be the exception that proved the rule.

Such grand thefts happen from time to time, but they remain fairly uncommon. Magicians tend

to find them regrettable, but not devastating. One reason for this is that magicians consider their

tricks to be only a part of their craft, the other part being performance and showmanship. Robert-

Houdin famously instructed that a magician at his best is not a trickster know-it-all, but rather

sentiment, observing, “Tricks and dodges are of comparatively small importance in the art of

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Hence, magicians tend to treat the ripping off of someone’s “act” more seriously than

they treat the mere pilfering of a secret. The latest high-profile instance of this sort of stealing

occurred when magical upstart Eric Walton copied the work of highly-renowned magician Ricky

Jay. Not only did Walton perform an old trick Jay had previously resurrected from the annals of

magic history, but Walton mimicked the distinctive style of Jay’s act—a charmingly pedantic

routine, where Jay uses esoteric words and presents himself as a kind of mad professorial genius.

a ticket and I sat through the show, and I would very much like my money and my material

Teller dismissed Walton backhandedly, explaining, “magicians are not unique in their absence of

Despite the potential for stealing, however, the biggest threat to magicians’ intellectual

property lies elsewhere—in the exposure of magic secrets to the lay public. Magicians have

endured a handful of memorable instances of large-scale exposure over the years. Ironically, one

of the first and most widely disseminated exposures was intentionally issued by a friend of

and balls” trick. Yet, Scot’s book aimed to dissuade religious authorities from persecuting

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Later exposures, however, tended to stem from more nefarious purposes. Giovanni

Giuseppe Pinetti, the preeminent magician of the late eighteenth century, found himself a victim

of exposure when he took his act to France. Pinetti impressed the King in a private performance

and attracted sold-out crowds to Paris theatres until magician and lawyer Henri Decremps

nevertheless damaged Pinetti’s reputation and ruined his material. Legend has it that Pinetti got

his revenge with a bold ruse befitting a clever magician. Pinetti supposedly hired a shabbylooking

vagabond to attend his show and pretend to be Decremps. The vagabond was instructed

to stand up during Pinetti’s show, announce himself as Decremps, and harass Pinetti from the

audience. Pinetti then proceeded to calmly endure the vagabond’s ravings, toss him a few coins,

and dismiss the pitiful character from the theatre, word of the apparent humiliation spreading far

and wide.

More recently, in what one observer has called “the mother of all exposures,” R.J.

Reynolds exposed thirty-nine classic tricks as part of a massive advertising campaign in 1933 to

months, peddled cigarettes with a catchy slogan: “It’s fun to be fooled . . . It’s more fun to

for R.J. Reynolds that its customers didn’t know many things about its product. In any case, the

ads gave a description of each of the thirty-nine illusions followed by a short explanation of how

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each trick was done. Some of the ads offered explanations that bordered on the absurd. Here’s

the description of the method behind one exposed levitation:

[T]he girl wears a concealed harness, which ends in a socket between her shoulder

blades. This is attached to a piston below the stage. The piston is pushed up from below,

causing her to rise in the air. The piston is invisible because it is covered with mirrors

The brilliant Maskelyne-Kellar levitation this was not. And woe to the person who actually tried

even the false exposures served to devalue magicians’ work. You need to know something about

mirrors to truly appreciate why the above method wouldn’t work, and a layman may well thus

dismiss everything he sees on stage as “done with mirrors.”

The most recent major exposure occurred in the late 1990s, when someone posing as a

“masked magician” revealed a number of fairly serious illusions in a series of four prime-time

Fox television specials. The first special, titled “Breaking the Magician’s Code: Magic’s Secrets

Finally Revealed,” broke ratings records with twenty-four million viewers, more than any game

revealed the secret to the Metamorphosis illusion, and Jonathan Pendragon summed up

magicians’ sentiments well: “It’s like destroying Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. I find these

Metamorphosis, the Pendragons’ split-second performance of it is genuinely a thing of beauty. If

you do know the basic principle, however, the trick becomes merely an impressive technical feat,

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or at best a physical puzzle. The Fox specials profited from the cheap thrill of the secret, but

they destroyed the ultimately more satisfying thrill of the mystery. They also threatened the

livelihoods of many magicians who performed the exposed illusions. These performers invested

money to built the illusions and time to practice and perfect them. Fox and the Masked Magician

made money by tearing them down. As one angry magician put it, with a memorable image,

In the wake of all of these past exposures, magicians have not always agreed about the

damage exposure does. Some magicians find it to be a minor annoyance, but not a grave threat to

the magic community. Others, in what is undoubtedly a majority view, vigorously oppose it. The

case for apathy tends to rely on two oft-repeated arguments. The first argument taps into a

certain brand of magicians’ machismo. If something gets exposed, the argument goes, magicians

will just invent another illusion—indeed, a better one. Harry Kellar best illustrated this response

one evening after a show. One of his illusions used an expensive, carefully-crafted trick box, and

a member of the audience had indicated that he knew how the box worked. Kellar proceeded to

take the box into an ally behind the theatre and chop it up with an axe. He told his assistants,

and difficult. It is no wonder that this reaction to exposure tends to be expressed primarily by

magic’s most creative and innovative performers. The exposures tend to reveal “common magic”

while those performers use mostly “proprietary magic” and have the means and wherewithal to

invent more of it.

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The second argument for apathy relies on the unquestionable truth that secrets are

magician great. The other half is the presentation—the acting and staging that turn a mere trick

into a captivating mystery, a puzzling illusion into a meaningful piece of performance art. Truth

be told, many magicians grossly neglect this aspect of their craft, and this explains the existence

of so many second-rate magicians. David Devant underscored the truth in a memorable exchange

with an aspiring magician. He asked the aspirant how many tricks he knew, to which the aspirant

boasted, “About three hundred.” Devant, the world-famous old master, responded, “Actually, I

Yet, the problem with this second argument is its fundamental confusion of what is

necessary for magic with what is sufficient. While it remains true that good magic is more than a

few secret tricks, magic would cease to be magic without those secrets. Robert-Houdin was right

to think of himself as an “actor playing the part of a magician,” but imagine how bad of an actor

he would be if he could not fool his audience—that is, if he could not get his audience to believe

his character, to believe that he was a magician. Magic has always grasped for respectability as a

serious performing art, and de-emphasis of secrets surely flatters the artistic pretension. But

magicians nevertheless depend on secrets as much as they depend on presentation, and apathy

toward the former is just as dangerous as apathy toward the latter. And despite the naysayers,

most magicians tend to agree.

Exposure has another harmful quality of particular relevance to intellectual property. One

economic hesitance about treating ideas as property has focused on the notion that such

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intangible resources, unlike tangible property, tend to be “non-rival” and thus consumable at zero

can read it and enjoy it without depleting the literary resource. A piece of tangible property such

as one’s home, by contrast, does not have this quality. If Joe is using Bob’s home, Bob cannot

use it. Yet, although magic secrets are unquestionably an intangible resource, exposure of magic

secrets does not have the non-rival characteristic that accompanies other uses of intangible

resources. Exposure reveals the secret, and thereby destroys its value. R.J. Reynolds’ or the

masked magician’s use of a secret is incompatible with the primary use of it by magicians. The

revelation of an ordinary trade secret strips the secret-holder of his prior competitive advantage,

but it does not preclude the original creator from continuing to use his innovative new process or

gadget. Yet, not so with magic. Exposing a magic secret is more akin to burning down Bob’s

house—for the thrill and amusement of watching it burn.

In our brief tour through the world of magic, we have seen how magicians benefit from

sharing, but also how stealing and exposing present threats to the magic community. Magicians

seek to maximize the amount of productive sharing within the magic community while

minimizing the amount of stealing and exposure. We have also discovered an idiosyncratic kind

of intangible resource—the magic secret—which defies the orthodox economic theory of

intellectual property. In this Part, we examine the legal rules that presently secure rights to

intellectual property, observing how those legal rules map onto magic’s unique “innovation

property rights] therefore may allow the intellectual property owner to raise the price of that work above the

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ecology.” We will see that the law fails to protect magic’s most valuable intellectual property,

and that traditional IP law forces magicians to make undesirable tradeoffs that they would rather

avoid.

The first place we might look for intellectual property rights in magic is copyright law.

The federal Copyright Act of 1976 affords copyright protection to original “dramatic works” and

accommodate magic acts. However, all copyright remains subject to the significant limitation

that the original works be “fixed in [a] tangible medium of expression . . . from which they can

copyright scripts, written stage directions, or video recordings of their performances, and the

copyrights could be used to block all substantially similar public performances of their

creative act—the live performance.

Yet, the more significant difficulty with copyright involves the fact that magic tricks

themselves cannot be copyrighted. A magician could conceivably copyright the dramatic aspects

of his show, and he could copyright a written description of the method behind an illusion, so

that his written description of the method could not be precisely reproduced. But the magician

could not copyright the method itself. The law excludes it emphatically: “In no case does

copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process,

copyrighted work publicly.” 17 U.S.C. § 106(4).

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system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery regardless of the form in which it

protect the most common expression of magicians’ intellectual property—live stage

performance—as well as magicians’ most valuable creations—the modus operandi behind each

illusion.

One reason why ideas and methods do not receive copyright protection is the fact that

such protection is thought to be available through patent law. Nineteenth century magicians often

thought of their craft as a sort of scientific invention, and the patenting of new illusions enjoyed a

brief period of popularity. Quickly, however, magicians discovered a most bothersome problem

with patent law: To earn patent protection for their methods, magicians would have to reveal

them. And that would defeat much of the point.

Maskelyne learned this lesson after securing a patent for an illusion of his called

“Psycho.” It consisted of a mysterious mechanical automaton, which appeared to think, answer

questions, and act like a real human being. It became an instant hit in the theatres of London, but

a writer soon discovered the patent and exposed Maskelyne’s method to laymen by publishing it

its tobacco ads was the famous “sawing a lady in half” trick, the exposed version of which was

invented by American magician Horace Goldin. Outraged by the exposure, Goldin sued R.J.

Reynolds alleging “unfair competition,” but the court quickly dismissed his suit. Observing that

Goldin had patented his illusion, the court explained:

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Certainly [Goldin’s patent] is a clear and detailed expose of the secret to the public by the

plaintiff himself. Any one who cares to can rightfully and lawfully procure a copy of said

And, it should be added, any cigarette company can then publish that explanation in the

newspapers for all to see.

Some nineteenth century magicians might have tried to obscure their secrets by offering

vague descriptions in their patent papers. Describing their innovative method of using mirrors to

make “ghosts” appear, Henry Dirks and J.H. Pepper explained unhelpfully, “The proper angle of

this sort of ruse would not be worth the effort, as it would render the patent unenforceable.

Federal patent law’s stringent “written description” and “enabling disclosure” rules require “a

written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in

such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it

intellectual property through patent law, they must make their secrets available to the public.

They must thus be willing to destroy much of what makes that property valuable. Consequently,

description “all wrong.” He adds, “For an optical effect like Pepper’s ghost, the angles and sightlines of the

levitation illusion designed by John Gaughan but famously performed by David Copperfield). Gaughan reportedly

filed the patent against Copperfield’s wishes.

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Finally, we come to what some might suppose to be the most promising area of

intellectual property law for magicians. Magic secrets, after all, are secrets; so perhaps trade

secret law offers valuable legal protection. As with copyright and patent, however, trade secret

law erects significant obstacles which greatly limit its value to the magic community. Horace

Goldin, the magician who unsuccessfully sued R.J. Reynolds in 1938, did successfully use trade

secret law in 1922 to block a film company from exposing his “sawing a lady in half” illusion. In

a very broad ruling, the court granted Goldin’s “unfair competition” claim and held that the film

company had “unlawfully and unfairly take[n] advantage of the success which has rewarded the

although the film company planned to expose a method that differed from Goldin’s in

significant ways, the court observed that “the conclusion cannot be escaped that the purpose of

the defendants in the making and exhibition of their picture” was to deprive Goldin of his ability

Where Goldin triumphed, however, today’s magicians are likely to fail. Modern trade

secret law, despite variations from state to state, tends to take a far narrower view of trade secret

protection than the 1922 court. Two particular requirements for trade secret protection present

obstacles. First, trade secret law holds that liability for violating a trade secret only attaches to

below the generally accepted standards of commercial morality and reasonable conduct.”).

23

bribery and espionage would likely have qualified as improper means, whereas the discovery of

deKolta’s secret flower design on the theatre floor probably would not have qualified. A former

assistant could not breach a confidentiality agreement or an implied duty of confidentiality by

sharing that secret with a rival magician. And in this limited respect, magicians have successfully

used trade secret law in an effort to protect some of their proprietary magic from theft or

Yet, one common means of stealing and exposure does not require breaching any such

duty of confidentiality. It instead involves discovering an illusion’s method on one’s own, and

then copying or exposing it. The Decremps exposures, as well as many of the R.J. Reynolds

exposures, resulted from what trade secret law calls “reverse engineering.” The exposed secrets

would thus not receive trade secret protection. As the Restatement puts it, “Independent

discovery and analysis of publicly available products or information are not improper means of

property, trade secret law does not prevent further exposure.

The second, and more significant, obstacle to trade secret protection for magicians is the

consider something no longer secret once it has been disclosed within an industry. Courts

I . . . understand that in the course of my employment I may become entrusted with the secrets of the illusions

and magic in the David Copperfield Show. I realize that this is privileged information and that a great deal of

time, energy, and money has been spent in the development of these illusions. I promise never to discuss

these secrets and methods with any other person, relative or friend. The secrets of the Magic of David

Copperfield are the proprietary rights of David Copperfield and under penalty of sever fine I agree to

cooperate with my total secrecy.

David Copperfield, Secrecy Agreement (1998) (copy on file with author).

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consider “the extent to which the information is known outside of [the secret-holder’s] business”

and the “ease or difficulty with which the information could be properly acquired or duplicated

has been shared informally among a number of magicians, it likely loses its entitlement to trade

secret protection. Moreover, it does not matter whether the secret is disclosed by the secretholder,

Since so many secrets have been published and shared with other magicians, it remains

very difficult for magicians to use trade secret law to prevent exposures. In response to the Fox

Network’s “masked magician” specials, the magic community tried to sue the network for

violation of trade secrets. One magician, Andre Kole, alleged that Fox was exposing an illusion

of his called the “Table of Death.” The suit failed, however, after it was discovered that a similar

trick, called the “Death of Cora,” dated back to 1898 and had been published in several magic

secret law rests on the fact that courts tend to view intellectual property as inhering in individuals

or in firms, but not in industries. This stems from the traditional conception of trade secret law as

a means of incentivizing innovators by giving them a competitive advantage over their direct

competitors in the industry. Yet, the magic community’s “innovation ecology” works differently.

The threat of exposure results primarily from competition by industry outsiders, not by insiders.

Scientology’s claim to trade secret protection for confidential scriptures, where scriptures were posted on the

internet).

25

Disclosure of secrets to insiders—i.e., to fellow magicians—thus does not void the intention to

Nevertheless, despite this reality, hesitance to apply trade secret protections to magicians’

common trade secrets may be understandable. It would be difficult to define who qualifies as an

insider and who qualifies as an outsider for purposes of judging efforts to maintain secrecy. It

would also be difficult to determine who speaks for the magic community in determining how

different sorts of intellectual property should be used. Magicians themselves are often the ones

who “sell out” and cause the most damaging exposures. Often, the industry outsider has an inside

man. Hence, in sum, modern trade secret law forces magicians to choose between sharing a

secret with their fellow magicians on the one hand, and preventing exposure to the lay public on

the other. Trade secret law does not permit magicians to secure the benefits of sharing without

bearing the costs of exposure. For “proprietary magic,” trade secret law can be effective, since

this kind of magic is not widely shared among magicians. But for the larger mass of “common

magic,” magicians are unable to use trade secret law to protect the most valuable aspect of their

intellectual property—their secrets.

As we have seen, neither copyright, patent, nor trade secret law offers significant

protection for magicians’ intellectual property. Many of IP law’s qualifications and limitations

flow from the assumption that intangible property is non-rival, and therefore that intellectual

property holders should get something less robust than a full-fledged property right. Yet, IP

law’s partial property rights ill-suit the unique characteristics of magic secrets, which require

(Church of Scientology’s distribution of scriptures to church members does not negate trade secret protection against

disclosure to non-members.).

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more protection than intellectual property law can spare to afford. Copyright law might prevent

some stealing of magic routines, but it cannot prevent stealing or exposure of magic methods;

patent law can prevent stealing of magic methods, but it cannot prevent exposure of them;

finally, trade secret law might prevent some stealing and exposure of “proprietary magic,” but it

cannot prevent the exposure of “common magic” without chilling the salutary practice of sharing

among magicians.

Most magicians have come to understand this reality. Reflecting on his unsuccessful

lawsuit against the Fox Network, Andre Kole recalled, “I felt somewhat like shooting a BB gun

The lack of protection from intellectual property law, however, has not stopped

magicians from innovating and thriving. Intellectual property law leaves the most damaging

threat to magic—exposure—undeterred. Yet, despite a few high profile incidents, the magic

community’s intellectual property has not been subject to constant exposure. In this Part, we

discover how magicians manage to create and enforce intellectual property rights without the

help of formal intellectual property law. In short, the magic community has developed a fairly

effective informal, norm-based IP regime which limits access, establishes use and exposure

norms, and enforces violations—all outside the purview of the law.

The vast collection of shared “common magic” can be understood in one sense as a

common-pool resource (“CPR”). Elinor Ostrom pioneered the study of CPRs in the context of

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natural resource policy. Ostrom discovered a variety of organic, informal institutions that

governed CPRs in the absence of both private property rights and central, top-down authority.

She found “self-governing forms of collective action” which enabled “groups of principals [to]

informal institutions to effectively govern CPRs depends first and foremost on “defining the

controls access to its common intellectual resources quite artfully.

“Popular magic” remains easy to find. Anyone can go to the library to learn it or walk

into the local magic shop to purchase it. This gives the false impression that the magic

community does a poor job of controlling access to its secrets. In fact, however, the easy

availability of “popular magic” brilliantly achieves what magicians call “misdirection.” “Popular

magic” serves to satisfy those in search of the cheap secret. And “popular magic” gives them just

that—cheap secrets. These secrets are harmless in the hands of the general public, since they

tend not to compromise the more valuable secrets that magicians aim to preserve. Moreover,

“popular magic” plays an important filtering role. Many magicians will tell a familiar story of

how they found their way into magic. They hung around the magic shop, voraciously absorbed

all of the “popular magic” they could get their hands on, and made their dedication to the craft

known. In time, they were noticed by more senior magicians, who deemed them worthy and

offered them keys to the kingdom—the vibrant world of free-flowing “common magic.”

For much of this “common magic,” no real key is needed. New magicians only need

advice on where to look. Yet, “popular magic” effectively diverts and filters in a way that

manages to shield “common magic” from merely curious prying eyes. Magic magazines cannot

(1990).

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be purchased at a newsstand, real magic books cannot be found at Barnes & Nobles, and most

“common magic” sits below the magic shop counter on top of which “popular magic” is

displayed. Less subtle barriers also control access to many “common magic” resources.

Membership in the International Brotherhood of Magicians, for instance, requires applicants to

have been interested in magic for at least two years prior to admission and to secure sponsorship

by two current members. Hollywood’s Magic Castle club and London’s Magic Circle club

require applicants to audition for membership. Even Prince Charles, an amateur magic

enthusiast, was made to audition before the Magic Circle would offer him membership.

“Proprietary magic” remains even more difficult to access. At this level, access is far less

formal and granted on a more ad hoc basis. One must impress magic’s top practitioners and earn

their trust and respect. The most common way magicians earn such esteem is by winning the

many national and international magic competitions organized by various groups each year.

These resemble a kind of magicians’ Olympic circuit, with contests in a variety of categories and

awards of varying prestige. The highest honor for a magician is to win the FISM Grand Prix

Nations-style international organization for the magic community. The competition occurs every

three years, requires three endorsements to compete, and involves two grueling rounds of

competition. The winner, chosen by a panel of judges, joins magic’s most elite club of which

only four Americans are members.

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As magicians spend more time in the magic community, they come to internalize a

handful of common norms that govern how secrets, techniques, and presentations are to be

(1) The first person to publish or prominently perform a trick gets credit

for inventing it.

(2) People are encouraged to publish improvements and new versions of

previously shared work, but derivative works should acknowledge and credit the

original.

These norms function to encourage innovation and sharing. Considerable prestige attaches to the

inventors and “teachers” of the magic community. Magicians are encouraged to publish books,

give instructional lectures, and sell apparatus, in addition to simply performing their shows.

Sharing is not expected to be done for free, and magicians can make a consideration amount of

money teaching and supplying their ideas to other magicians. The attribution norms thus also

advance the purposes of trademark law, since they help a magician build her reputation for

producing quality work.

The second set of norms governs the use of a new idea once it has been created. Here,

there are at least four major use norms:

(1) If a secret method or dramatic presentation has not been widely shared,

published, or sold, nobody else can use it.

(2) If a secret method has been widely shared, published, or sold, it may

be used freely.

experience and observations as a member of the magic community.

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(3) If a dramatic presentation has been widely shared, published, or sold, it

may be used, but using it will be considered bad form.

(4) If a trick was originally published or shared but has not been used for a

long time, the person who re-discovers it should be treated as if she invented it.

These norms encourage innovation by giving inventors the choice of whether to perform their

inventions exclusively, or instead to gain the money and prestige associated with sharing those

inventions. The norms frown upon stealing, while encouraging sharing. They also affirm the

importance of originality in presentation and performance, both to spur magicians to take their

craft seriously as an art as well as to protect magicians’ trademarks among lay audiences. These

use norms also encourage magicians to rediscover long forgotten tricks.

The third and final category of norms governs the exposure of the magic community’s

secrets to the lay public:

(1) Never expose a secret to a non-magician.

(2) Never expose a secret to a non-magician.

(3) Never expose a secret to a non-magician.

The message here is fairly clear, and this no-exposure norm remains the most strongly and

consistently enforced of the bunch. Indeed, it tends to be treated as an absolute, per se rule.

common enterprise of magic; it cheapens the craft.

The rights secured by this set of intellectual property norms overlap with those secured

by formal intellectual property law. But they also differ in important respects. Magicians’ IP

norms tend to surround the common-pool resource of magic secrets with much taller fences than

IP law, but the norms erect shorter fences than IP law to police the boundaries inside the

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common resource. While copyright law does not put any limits on using the ideas and methods

contained in a copyrighted work, magicians’ attribution norms create a right to be recognized.

Magicians’ use norms also protect live performances, as well as those fixed in a tangible

medium. In fact, these norms may reverse copyright’s preference for a tangible medium, since

the norms tend to dissolve the creator’s exclusive right once an idea has been published in

tangible form. Performance of a trick without publishing it is a magician’s strongest signal to the

magic community that she intends to keep it for herself. In another respect, however, magicians’

norms offer less protection than copyright law. Unlike copyright law, magicians’ use norms do

not give inventors exclusive performance rights to their published works. This is a significant

difference that enables sharing within the magic community. Finally, and most obviously,

magicians’ exposure norms prohibit exposure of magic secrets to the general public, regardless

of who invents the secret, how it is acquired, or with whom it was previously shared. This

collection of intellectual property norms serves the magic community much better than the lawbased

alternative. The norm-based IP regime protects against harmful exposure while enabling

and encouraging productive innovation and sharing.

Of course, these norms would be of little value if they could not adequately be enforced.

Although the magic community certainly endures its share of breaches, magicians tend to

enforce norm-based IP rules reasonably well. All of the major magicians’ organizations have

well-established and respected codes of ethics. More informally, one’s adherence to the

attribution and use norms affects one’s standing in the highly interconnected magic community.

Those who violate the norms lose the respect of their peers. And such esteem counts for much.

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Hence, those who rise to prominence in the magic community tend to be exemplars of these

norms, and thus help perpetuate the norms by modeling good behavior for all to see. Magicians

who behave badly may not be invited to give lectures, perform in magic competitions, or be

featured in magic trade publications.

Rogue manufacturers of magic tricks may be more difficult to control than performers

and inventors with professional reputations to maintain. Yet, the magic community has done a

reasonably good job of controlling manufacturers as well. One magician recalls his experience

dealing with a manufacturer who stole one of his inventions:

[A] company in England, Illusions Plus, was selling still another rip-off of my

illusion. When I protested to the owner, James Antony, he told me there was no court in

the world which could stop him from what he was doing. I explained I had no intention of

going to court. I instead simply told my many friends in [London’s] Magic Circle about it

. . . .

When the word spread, soon Mr. Antony ‘had a problem.’ As things turned out,

there was indeed a court which promptly put him out of business…the bankruptcy

When a similar rogue manufacturer began selling a number of unauthorized illusions, a long list

of magic’s most respected leaders signed a letter shaming the manufacturer and asking it to cease

and desist. Magic trade publications also tend to avoid publishing advertisements by disreputable

manufacturers.

Although magicians seriously enforce their attribution and use norms, they save their

most potent firepower for those in the magic community who violate the sacred exposure norm.

The norm becomes instilled in a magician’s consciousness from an early age, and violations are

33

punished swiftly and mercilessly. A few examples will suffice. David Devant, one of magic’s

public, and the title page declared Devant’s intention to “disclose[] for the first time the Secrets

exposed secrets were Devant’s own, London’s Magic Circle investigated Devant for violating

the prestigious club’s rules. This was no small matter, since Devant had helped found the club a

few decades earlier, had been the club’s first president, and had donated his library to it. But it

did not matter. The Council of the Magic Circle voted to revoke Devant’s membership,

explaining, “We are extremely sorry for Mr. Devant . . . but surely . . . the high, almost unique

But what of magic’s most notorious recent exposer—Fox’s “masked magician?” The

magic community discovered the identity of the masked magician shortly after his first television

special, and well before he dramatically “revealed” his identity on the fourth special. The masked

magician turned out to be a middling Las Vegas magician by the name of Val Valentino. One of

Valentino’s magician friends, after discovering that Valentino was the masked magician, recalled

that he advised Valentino to go on TV and “do a Jimmy Swaggart thing, cry and ask for

Vegas illusion manufacturer Bill Smith vowed never to build another prop for Valentino.

Although Valentino had been a magician for twenty-five years, nearly every one of his peers

34

shunned him from the community. “I’m sort of excommunicated now from the magic fraternity’s

Brazil.

Indeed, magicians even enforce their anti-exposure norm against laypeople. Magician and

collector Sidney Radner had loaned his multi-million dollar collection of Houdini artifacts to the

Houdini Museum in Houdini’s childhood home of Appleton, Wisconsin. Indeed, he even

included a provision in his will that would have given the collection to the museum after his

death. Yet, when the museum featured an exhibit revealing the secret to Houdini’s

Metamorphosis illusion, Radner reacted with outrage. He promptly took back his 1,000-piece

defended the Fox Network’s exposure specials against the lawsuit by Andre Kole, confessed,

This paper has pulled back the curtain on the world of magic—revealing the “innovation

ecology” that animates the magic industry, outlining the inability of intellectual property law to

mesh with magic’s innovation dynamics, and yet explaining magic’s innovation by way of a

comparatively superior norm-based IP regime which has bloomed in law’s absence. We may

now take a step back to consider what IP scholars might learn from this study of the magic

community.

Oct. 29, 2004.

(Jan. 2003).

35

The first lesson involves the role of exceptionalism in intellectual property theory.

Scholars have wondered whether the presence of innovation in IP’s various “negative spaces”

owes itself to an overarching dynamic present in all of these negative spaces, or instead whether

In this clash between hedgehogs and foxes, the example of the magic industry supports the

one that belies the traditional assumption that intangible property must be non-rival. Since the

resource of magic secrets can actually be depleted by misuse, the need to protect such intellectual

property takes on particular importance. The magic community’s efforts to safeguard their

intellectual property have thus been molded around this idiosyncratic imperative. At the same

time, the magic community has sought to encourage another particular aspect of its innovation

culture—sharing.

Neither orthodox IP law nor the total absence of IP rights could achieve these dual goals

of preventing exposure and encouraging sharing. In either regime, the goals would be mutually

exclusive. Hence, the second lesson we can glean from this study involves the power of norms,

buttressed by organic relationships and self-organizing institutions, to create alternative IP

regimes that enforce unique, industry-specific IP rights. Norms, rather than law, can be the

source of much IP creativity. This norm-based explanation also suggests that not all of IP’s

successful negative spaces offer evidence that IP is unnecessary. As we have seen here, IP is

http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/faculty/2006/11/the_negative_sp.html (“Is there a thread that links these (and other)

fields in an integrated theory of innovation law? Or is each field subject to . . . socio-economic investigation . . . ?”).

36

not.

Yet, this brings us to our third lesson, and here we observe the potential fragility of normbased

IP regimes. Norms may not always be a reliable savior to the woes of law. Consider the

magic community’s imperative of controlling access to its common pool of magic secrets.

Without controlling access, the magic community would be vulnerable to outsiders who could

misappropriate secrets without being subject to the magic community’s norms. But the easy and

growing availability of information on the internet makes it harder to control access than ever

before. Wikipedia, for example, already explains the secrets to numerous tricks. Jon

Racherbaumer, one of magic’s old-timers fears the worst:

We live in a time of unprecedented access to knowledge and almost everyone

promiscuously promulgates info-junk—so-called facts, seductive factoids, spill-your-guts

revelations, behind-the-scene scoops, titillating tabloid disclosures, tell-all biographies

and autobiographies, and hard-nose investigative exposes… We are awash in wholesale

The stable, norm-based IP equilibrium in the magic community could well unravel at some point

in the future. Norms may thus not necessarily be a reason to quit worrying about law-based IP

protections.

Finally, our fourth lesson suggests that courts ought to be more willing to heed the role of

norms and idiosyncrasies in the application of IP law. Although a court would likely deem a

piece of “common magic” shared among the magic community to be insufficiently deserving of

trade secret protection, perhaps attention to norms suggests otherwise. To determine whether a

secret has been sufficiently guarded, courts could look to the norms of the magic community

37

instead of relying on an ill-fitting paradigm of intra-industry competition. Doing so would

suggest that, for magicians, revealing a secret to the community of fellow magicians is actually

no revelation at all. The more significant revelation comes only when magic secrets are revealed

in an accessible way to the general public. Property law has been solicitous of efficient norms in

Until then, however, magicians will continue to innovate, continue to saw assistants in

half, and continue to conjure their mysteries. They will continue to perform the cups and balls

trick, preserved yet perfected since the days of Alciphron the Athenian. And magic’s informal

system of intellectual property will continue to make this possible, hidden as it may be, behind

the curtain.

fishermen identified rights of possession in caught whales).