Dick Whittington and Creativity: From Trade to Folklore, From Folklore to Trade

In this essay, I consider whether such increased intellectual property protection for stories and folktales is the wisest policy course. While accepting the validity of the two major concerns that underpin the effort to implement greater intellectual property protection, I argue here that greater intellectual property protections risk serious harm to innovation and creativity by narrowing the public domain and are not the best means to achieve these desired ends. To make my argument, I will draw on the Dick Whittington story as both an example of a folktale in danger of overprotection by expanded intellectual property regimes and also as an analogy to the legal treatment of folklore over the past several decades.