Two Courts, Two Ad Campaigns, And Copyright's Idea-Expression Dichotomy

Lawyers say this to clients all the time: you can't copyright an idea; copyright protection extends only to an author's original expression of an idea. (See 17 U.S.C. § 102.) This fundamental principle - a.k.a. the idea- expression dichotomy - is critical to ensure that copyright law fulfills the constitutionally mandated goal of "promot[ing] the Progress of Science and useful Arts" (U.S. Const. art. 1, § 8, cl. 8). If copyright law didn't allow future artists to repurpose and remix the ideas of yore, fewer creative works would be produced and published, and the public would be the poorer. After all, to some degree, all stories boil down to a single idea - the "hero's Journey"; every artist references, pays homage to, and stands on the shoulders of the giants that came before, and "there is nothing new under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Ideas must be free as air.