Define the author. From intellectual property to the rights and literature movement

Abstract

In legal research the definition of the author is generally approached from the perspective of intellectual property, where the author is considered the owner of exclusive rights in a closed-ended arrangement. But another and perhaps more appropriate approach is the one found in literary criticism, located here at the crossroads of law and literature. Based on this latter approach, the intention is to shed light on certain interpretative elements that broaden the one-track definition of author based on intellectual property. Consequently, this paper discusses the notion of authorship that exists in copyright law and in the area of literary criticism with two purposes: first, to criticize the paradigm of autonomy of the individual creator / owner and second, to provide additional criteria to overcome the univocal meaning of the definition of author.