Informal "protection" of the incentive to innovate in magic tricks is discussed in this paper . No IP monopoly required.

The pointer is from Tyler Cowen at marginal revolution .

Yes, I am working on a trick to levitate the Patent and Trademark Office. I'll let a real magician, like David Copperfield make it disappear.

Your "in this paper" link is incorrect. It links to a content-free page that is titled "ht...64" and simply contains the level-one heading "Service Unavailable".

Apparently you linked to the wrong machine and it isn't even a Web server, nevermind linking to merely the wrong file.

P.S. first attempt to post this silently failed. What gives?

The link works fine as far as I can tell. It links to paper; here is the title and author copied and pasted from the article:

Secrets Revealed: How Magicians Protect Intellectual Property without Law

JACOB LOSHIN Yale Law School -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- July 25, 2007

The link was evidently corrected shortly after I posted the original comment -- which, of course, is exactly what was supposed to result.

P.S. this form has terrible usability. Having to scroll *up* to find the submit button after filling in the form is just plain boneheaded design.