An esoteric debate has surfaced in the legal flap over a tattoo appearing on a character in the Thursday movie release of The Hangover: Part II.

It surrounds the question of whether a work first rendered on the human body can be copyright.

The nation’s top cited copyright scholar, David Nimmer, doesn’t think so. The author of Nimmer on Copyright was an expert witness for studio Warner Bros., which is being sued on accusations of misappropriating an artist’s copyrighted tattoo originally emblazoned on Mike Tyson’s face.

David Nimmer

Since 1985, Nimmer, a UCLA law professor and practicing...

A pair of musicians from Washington, D.C., who go by the name Bluebrain have put together a location-aware album called The National Mall.

“For example,” Ryan Holladay, one half of Bluebrain, told Wired.co.uk, “approach a lake and a piano piece changes into a harp. Or, as you get close to the children’s mer...