Intellectual Property Issues on the Humanities and Scholarly Publishing: 2000–2024

The legal basis in the United States for intellectual property (IP) is the U.S. Constitution in Article 1 § 8. However, it was the responsibility of the U.S. Congress to pass laws regarding patents, trademarks, and copyrights, issues of great importance to humanities scholars and authors. This chapter outlines briefly the terms and conditions of patents and trademarks. However, there is a detailed analysis of some key provisions of the U.S. Copyright Law (17 U.S.C.), a list and description of certain important copyright cases, and a detailed analysis of the important Sci-Hub copyright infringement case (in the Southern District of New York) regarding the illegal acquisition and posting for free of more than 65 million journal articles (possibly every scholarly article published since January 1665) and more than two million books.