E-Interview: Bill Patry
As promised in my prior post about Bill Patry's Patry on Copyrights, below is the Blog's first e-interview.* I emailed Patry questions about himself and his treatise and I print his responses (in italics) below.
What drove you to write a copyright treatise?
Probably a mild form of insanity. I have written other treatises, including a multivolume one of 1995, but I wanted to really go crazy, and did.
How did you go about writing the treatise and how large was the staff that helped you draft it?
It took me 7 years and when you include material I incorporated and revised from earlier works, it is 14 years total. I have never used assistants of any kind, so I researched and wrote 100% of it myself. The book evolved a lot over time, and I probably rewrote it substantially at least three times. I had a fair idea of the structure so the hard part was figuring out what kind of treatise I wanted it to be. A straight treatise along the lines of a recap of the statute and major case law is not so helpful or interesting. I wanted this to be exhaustive, meaning I tried to think of every issue I could, provide all cases I could, all legislative history, major commentary and insights from general law or even other disciplines outside of law. I tried to leave no stone unturned.
