Intellectual Property: Are You Watching Closely?

by Jordan Yerman | October 13, 2007 at 12:26 pm

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The article referenced below discusses a working paper on how professional magicians protect their tricks from rivals and the public. It directly relates to the ongoing real-world redefiniton of intellectual property rights.

In the late 1870s, a magician named Buatier de Kolta was mesmerizing audiences in Paris with the trick of producing big bunches of paper flowers from an empty roll of paper. Nobody knew how the trick was achieved, until a stray gust of wind blew one of the flowers onto the floor in front of the stage. A magician in the audience seized it and ran out, and de Kolta's trick was soon being performed by many of his rivals.

... Reminds me of The Prestige... in the film version, two magicians ruin each other's (and their own) lives in an ongoing war over a particular illusion.