One of the interesting takeaways from Jim Steinmeyer's Hiding the Elephant is the extent to which magicians preyed and continue to prey on one another's intellectual property. The traditional model of protecting such creations through copyright is contradictory to the magician's code of secrecy in that the effect must be described in sufficient detail to distinguish it from other effects and, in so doing, its secret becomes available to anyone who might care to visit a patent office or make an online search.
The post contains a link to a legal paper that argues that the apparent lack of protections for the creator actually has benefits for the art form as a whole.
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