In yesterday’s post, I postulated that Rowling’s treatment of copyright was similar to Goblin’s treatment of their creation. I said:
in the latter case of copyright, Rowling seems to take the disposition of the more calculating goblin Griphook, claiming her entitlement to own, and therefore prevent others from claiming an interest in her cultural property.
Today’s inbox welcomed a message from a friend that teaches at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville School of Law, Gary Pulsinelli, pointing me to a paper he wrote in 2008 drawing a similar analogy. The article titled: “Harry Potter and the (Re)Order of Artists: Are we Muggles or Goblins?” appeared in volume 87 of the Oregon Law Review, page 1101 et seq. I am posting the abstract below with a link to where you can get the article:
In “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” author J.K. Rowling attributes to goblins a very interesting view of ownership rights in artistic works. According to Rowling, goblins believe that the maker of an artistic object maintain an ongoing ownership interest in that object even after it is sold, and is entitled to get it back when the purchaser dies. While this view may strike some as rather odd when it is applied to tangible property in the ‘muggle’ world, it actually has some very interesting parallels to the legal treatment of intangible property, particularly in the areas of intellectual property and moral rights. Because of the way these parallels have been developing and growing, we seem to be becoming more goblinish in our willingness to recognize ongoing rights in artistic objects, including allowing the artist to collect a commission on subsequent resale of the work. Practical and social considerations suggest that we are unlikely to go as far as recognizing a permanent personal right in the creator that lets him or her reclaim such an object after a sale or other transfer is made. However, we are moving closer to recognizing some forms of the collective right that the goblins actually seem to demand, a cultural moral right in important cultural objects that enables the descendants of that culture as a group to demand the return of the object. Thus, we muggles may not be as far from the goblins as we may have at first believed.
Please feel free to send me more references or drop them in the comments.
MR
The Literary Table 
Gary Pulsinelli’s article is very interesting. In fact, I wrote a paper last year focusing on how the issue of cultural property rights is represented in August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson and in J.K.Rowling’s Deathly Hallows. I have since altered my argument and have presented a conference paper on the sword of Gryffindor as the Elgin Marbles and argue that the debate between Greece and Great Britain over the Elgin Marbles is mirrored in the dispute over the sword in Rowling’s novel. I enjoyed your post on property rights in Rowling’s novel; I think the issue is quite fascinating.