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LSAT Preptest 149, Section 2, Question 18

Passage 3: Intellectual Property

Explanation

A. Passage A's discussion of copyright law as a formal protection for comedians' material does not have a direct counterpart in Passage B regarding chefs and intellectual property; instead, social norms are described as the operative form of protection.


B. Patent law is not the focus in Passage B; instead, it discusses the informal social norms that operate similarly to legal protections, which does not align with the formal nature of copyright law in Passage A.


C. The combinations of ingredients in a recipe are not addressed in Passage A in relation to copyright law for comedians.


D. (Correct Response) Passage B discusses trade secrecy law as an informal social norm that chefs rely on to protect their recipes, which parallels the role of copyright law in protecting comedians' jokes as described in Passage A. Both instances reflect a reliance on non-legal norms to protect intellectual property when formal legal protections are either not available or not pursued.


E. Social norms are indeed central to both passages, but the question specifically asks for an analogy to the type of legal protection discussed in Passage A, which is copyright law, not the concept of social norms themselves.

Passage B explains how chefs use social norms similar to trade secrecy law to protect their recipes, analogous to how comedians in Passage A rely on social norms instead of copyright law to protect their jokes. This shows a reliance on informal systems of protection in both professions.

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