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andrewgilden.bsky.social
@andrewgilden.bsky.social
420 followers 700 following 14 posts
Professor: law & technology, queer theory, pleasure activism
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andrewgilden.bsky.social
Final version of my article, Pleasure & Pain in Intellectual Property, now published in William & Mary Law Review! wmlawreview.org/pleasure-pai...
Intellectual property produces pleasure. IP laws incentivize investment in popular culture, helping to ensure the viability of entertainment industries and the steady production of our favorite shows, cherished brands, and beloved celebrities. Across IP-heavy industries, creators cite the joy of writing, composing, coding, and experimenting as a motivation for countless hours in the office, studio, or lab. Nonetheless, in a broad range of settings, and across several areas of IP, courts have responded with hostility to personal accounts of pleasure in IP disputes. When a defendant admits to using IP because they are fans of the plaintiff, or because they wanted to share their love of popular culture, or because it was simply alot of fun, courts cite such admissions as reasons for ruling against them. By contrast, when parties to IP disputes cite not to joy, pleasure, or fandom, but instead to anger, pain, and adversity, courts are far more receptive to such motivations for copying. When a defendant asserts that they copied aspects of the plaintiff’s work or brand because they felt alienated by it, or because they wanted to ridicule it, or because they wanted to insult the rightsholder, courts have embraced such motives as supporting fair use and free speech defenses. While sanctioning painful narratives may help artists expose the biases embedded in much popular culture, the judicial privileging of pain also has facilitated disempowering, mocking, blatantly hateful, or intentionally harassing portrayals of vulnerable individuals and communities. Moreover, by privileging pain over pleasure, IP law has limited the ability of marginalized groups—especially women, people of color, and queer people—to share their joy publicly. This Article shows that courts routinely undervalue pleasure and overvalue pain when resolving IP disputes. This “pleasure taboo” discourages honesty in litigation, disconnects IP doctrine from real-world creative practices, and skews IP’s moral compass. Insults and derision emerge as archetypes of fair use and free speech, while fandom and joy become commodities for rightsholders to harvest and control.
November 15, 2025 at 11:40 PM
andrewgilden.bsky.social
April 30, 2025 at 5:23 PM
andrewgilden.bsky.social
New paper: Pleasure & Pain in Intellectual Property, forthcoming in William & Mary Law Review 🥳

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Intellectual property produces pleasure. IP laws incentivize investment in popular culture, helping to ensure the viability of entertainment industries and the steady production of our favorite shows, cherished brands, and beloved celebrities. Across IP-heavy industries, creators cite the joy of writing, composing, coding, and experimenting as a motivation for countless hours in the office, studio, or lab. Nonetheless, in a broad range of settings, and across several areas of IP, courts have responded with hostility to personal accounts of pleasure in IP disputes. When a defendant admits to using IP because they are fans of the plaintiff, or because they wanted to share their love of popular culture, or because it was simply a lot of fun, courts cite such admissions as reasons for ruling against them. By contrast, where parties to IP disputes cite not to joy, pleasure, or fandom, but instead to anger, pain, and adversity, courts are far more receptive to such motivations for copying. When a defendant asserts that they copied aspects of the plaintiff’s work or brand because they felt alienated by it, or because they wanted to ridicule it, or because they wanted to insult the rightsholder, courts have embraced such motives as supporting fair use and free speech defenses. While sanctioning painful narratives may help artists expose the biases embedded in much popular culture, the judicial privileging of pain also has facilitated disempowering, mocking, blatantly hateful, or intentionally harassing portrayals of vulnerable individuals and communities. Moreover, by privileging pain over pleasure, IP law has limited the ability of marginalized groups—especially women, people of color, and queer people—to share their joy publicly. This Article shows that courts routinely undervalue pleasure and overvalue pain when resolving IP disputes. This “pleasure taboo” discourages honesty in litigation, disconnects IP doctrine from real-world creative practices, and skews IP’s mora…
April 29, 2025 at 5:36 PM
andrewgilden.bsky.social
It’s giving Blackstone
Blackstone says: "Lastly, a common scold-'communis rix-atrix'-(for our law Latin confines it to the feminine gender,) is a public nuisance to her neighborhood, for which offence she may be indicted
March 9, 2025 at 2:42 PM
andrewgilden.bsky.social
Excited to share my new article with @sarahrajec.bsky.social: Patenting the Taboo: Sex, Drugs, and Abortion, forthcoming in Yale Journal of Law & Technology. Feedback welcome!

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
December 2, 2024 at 8:04 PM