Horace Goldin knew how to push things to the limit. One of the greatest stage magicians of his day, he blew away the competition with his remarkable trick of appearing to saw a woman in half on stage. That might not seem too impressive in these days of Derren Brown and even Guitar Hero, but it was pretty hot stuff in 1921.

Not content with this edgy material, Goldin moved on to spicing up his act by stationing ambulances outside the theatre and using a chainsaw. But despite the apparent danger of dismembering assistants and leaving the audience blood-spattered and traumatised, the great conjurer never slipped up on stage. His problems really started when he ventured unwisely into the far riskier world of intellectual property (IP) protection.

In his eagerness to secure the rights to his woman-slicing brainwave, Goldin applied for a patent for his contraption and settled back comfortably in the knowledge that he now need fear no imitators.

The problem, of course, was that applying for the patent meant that the trick behind his world-beating mechanism, billed as one of the great mysteries of the universe, was now available for perusal by anyone with the initiative to stroll up to the patent office and take a look. That took away a fair slice of the mystery, and sent a clear message to the world that magic and formal IP law don’t mix.

Trading on secrets

It’s a lesson that has been well observed by most magicians since, but not all, and a current lawsuit in New York threatens to spill another load of tightly held secrets into the public domain. One young magician, Jacob Spinney, has filed a suit against veteran TV illusionist Criss Angel, star of Cirque du Soleil and Mindfreak, claiming that Angel failed to pay up as agreed over a profit-sharing deal related to Spinney’s Chair Self-Levitation, Fork Bending Gimmick and other crowd-baffling tricks that
he had assigned to Angel.

While the suit centres on the tawdry and unmysterious business of payments due or not due, its progress could see more details revealed about the workings of self-suspending furniture and cutlery-bending than the conjurers would probably like.

Just as with Goldin’s dilemma, this suit goes to the heart of the problem of IP for magicians. Here’s an area in which the only way forward is by innovation and secrecy, but any attempt to protect an innovation through patent law or copyright enforcement leaves it open to public scrutiny and throws secrecy out the window.

In place of regular IP laws, professional magicians have developed a set of informal rules of their own, regulating how the deepest secrets of their trade are disseminated or, rather, not. When it comes to dealing with the non-magical community those rules are plain. Membership of any of the various guild-like magicians’ bodies around the world depends on a clearly stated commitment to keep the secrets of your tricks strictly within the trade.

But trying to find out what happens among magicians themselves is about as easy as getting a straight answer out of David Blaine. The smoke and mirrors of the trade are as deftly deployed on this matter as on any conjuring trick, but in essence it works by sheer peer pressure. There is a degree of technique sharing among magicians, but only on the strict understanding that any pilfering will get you in no end of unspecified trouble with your fellow tricksters.

It’s a medieval kind of method that leaves little room for more formal IP protection structures, but it certainly seems effective because even the most maverick conjuror would think very long and hard before annoying the entire wand-waving profession. Being chased through the courts is one thing but nobody wants to be sawn in half.

Richard Brass is a columnist for The Times. He writes on business issues for The Daily Telegraph and is a former editor of Punch.

This article first apeared in IP Review, Issue 28

Picture: Source

Horace Goldin knew how to push things to the limit. One of the greatest stage magicians of his day, he blew away the competition with his remarkable trick of appearing to saw a woman in half on stage. That might not seem too impressive in these days of Derren Brown and even Guitar Hero, but it was pretty hot stuff in 1921.

Not content with this edgy material, Goldin moved on to spicing up his act by stationing ambulances outside the theatre and using a chainsaw. But despite the apparent danger of dismembering assistants and leaving the audience blood-spattered and traumatised, the great conjurer never slipped up on stage. His problems really started when he ventured unwisely into the far riskier world of intellectual property (IP) protection.

In his eagerness to secure the rights to his woman-slicing brainwave, Goldin applied for a patent for his contraption and settled back comfortably in the knowledge that he now need fear no imitators.

The problem, of course, was that applying for the patent meant that the trick behind his world-beating mechanism, billed as one of the great mysteries of the universe, was now available for perusal by anyone with the initiative to stroll up to the patent office and take a look. That took away a fair slice of the mystery, and sent a clear message to the world that magic and formal IP law don’t mix.

Trading on secrets

It’s a lesson that has been well observed by most magicians since, but not all, and a current lawsuit in New York threatens to spill another load of tightly held secrets into the public domain. One young magician, Jacob Spinney, has filed a suit against veteran TV illusionist Criss Angel, star of Cirque du Soleil and Mindfreak, claiming that Angel failed to pay up as agreed over a profit-sharing deal related to Spinney’s Chair Self-Levitation, Fork Bending Gimmick and other crowd-baffling tricks that
he had assigned to Angel.

While the suit centres on the tawdry and unmysterious business of payments due or not due, its progress could see more details revealed about the workings of self-suspending furniture and cutlery-bending than the conjurers would probably like.

Just as with Goldin’s dilemma, this suit goes to the heart of the problem of IP for magicians. Here’s an area in which the only way forward is by innovation and secrecy, but any attempt to protect an innovation through patent law or copyright enforcement leaves it open to public scrutiny and throws secrecy out the window.

In place of regular IP laws, professional magicians have developed a set of informal rules of their own, regulating how the deepest secrets of their trade are disseminated or, rather, not. When it comes to dealing with the non-magical community those rules are plain. Membership of any of the various guild-like magicians’ bodies around the world depends on a clearly stated commitment to keep the secrets of your tricks strictly within the trade.

But trying to find out what happens among magicians themselves is about as easy as getting a straight answer out of David Blaine. The smoke and mirrors of the trade are as deftly deployed on this matter as on any conjuring trick, but in essence it works by sheer peer pressure. There is a degree of technique sharing among magicians, but only on the strict understanding that any pilfering will get you in no end of unspecified trouble with your fellow tricksters.

It’s a medieval kind of method that leaves little room for more formal IP protection structures, but it certainly seems effective because even the most maverick conjuror would think very long and hard before annoying the entire wand-waving profession. Being chased through the courts is one thing but nobody wants to be sawn in half.

Richard Brass is a columnist for The Times. He writes on business issues for The Daily Telegraph and is a former editor of Punch.

This article first apeared in IP Review, Issue 28

Picture: Source