INTRODUCTION – 1092

I. IDEA OR EXPRESSION: WHICH IS STYLE? – 1095
A. It’s Never What You Do but How It’s Done – 1096
B. Style is Copyrightable – 1102
C. Style is Not Copyrightable – 1105

II. THE CHALLENGE OF STYLE – 1108
A. Idea/Expression’s Limits – 1108
B. Copyright for Works not Oeuvres – 1110
C. Copyright Does Not Reward Fame – 1113

III. CLARIFYING COPYRIGHT’S SCOPE – 1115
A. Style as Form and Content – 1116
A. Copyright, Style, and the Authorial Symbol – 1118
B. A New Approach to Satire – 1128

CONCLUSION – 1129

Does copyright law protect an artist’s style? The federal courts that have considered the question are equally split. They all agree, however, that the answer to the question resides in copyright law’s idea/expression distinction. According to this doctrine, ideas, techniques, and methods cannot be copyrighted, but expressions of ideas can be. The question courts have faced, then, is whether artistic style is an idea or a matter of expression. The answer, perhaps unfortunately, is that style is both.

This is unfortunate because, this Article argues, copyright law’s idea/expression distinction is inadequate to the task of determining the copyrightability of style. Instead, it proposes a new way forward, grounded in aesthetic philosophy and a much-derided precedent, that embraces style’s dual nature. Just as style is both a matter of content and of form, so too is the copyrightable work both a matter of idea and of expression. On this understanding, defendants should only be found liable for infringement when they have copied both the plaintiffs’ expressive formal features and the ideas, content, or subject matter to which they have been applied.

Solving this problem is essential in light of the recent lawsuits against generative artificial intelligence platforms that make it trivially easy to produce images and text “in the style of” various artists. Copyright law needs a more coherent approach to this problem than it has achieved with its reliance on the idea/expression distinction.