In this podcast, David talks with filmmaker Rick Allen and copyright expert and advocate Kevin Madigan about the challenge that state sovereign immunity poses to creators of copyrightable works.
You wouldn’t think that a state entity would have the right to seize your intellectual property any more than it would have the right to seize other forms of property without due process. But it can.
Rick Allen is the CEO of Nautilus Productions in North Carolina. He spent seventeen years documenting the research and recovery work done on Blackbeard’s flagship the Queen Anne’s Revenge, after it was discovered off the North Carolina coast in 1996. When the state made infringing uses of Allen’s material, he sued, and that case Allen v. Cooper went to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2020, which affirmed that immunity barred Allen’s claim.
Kevin Madigan is Vice President, Legal Policy and Copyright Counsel at the advocacy organization Copyright Alliance in Washington D.C. He was previously Deputy Director at the Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property (CPIP) at George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School.
Contents