PrepTest 149 - Section 2 - Passage 3 - Question 18

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Passage A.

Phenomenon · Comedians don't use copyright law to protect their jokes from theft

Hypothesis · Filing lawsuits is too expensive to protect jokes

Costs include both actual costs and legal uncertainty about how copyright law applies to joke stealing.

Phenomenon · Despite no legal protection against joke theft, comedians still write lots of jokes

That's unexpected. Conventional wisdom would say that without legal protection, comedians wouldn't write jokes. But conventional wisdom is wrong.

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Hypothesis · Social norms protect from joke theft

Norms are enforced by punishments, such as damage to reputation.

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Intro topic · Chefs don't use law to protect their recipes

Intellectual property law usually doesn't cover recipes, and chefs rarely use trade secrecy laws.

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Social norms · Chefs protect recipes by three social norms

(Just like how Passage A said comedians use social norms to protect their jokes.)

Norm 1 · Don't copy another chef's recipe exactly

Functions like patent protection for something innovative.

Norm 2 · If secret recipe is revealed, don't pass it to someone else

Functions like trade secrecy protection.

Norm 3 · Give credit to people who developed recipes

Functions like copyright protection.

Passage Style

18.

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Question Type

Analogy (RC)

Comedians can, in theory, use copyright law to protect their jokes. But they don’t actually use copyright law to do this. This is analogous to the way in which trade secrecy law can apply to chefs’ recipes. But we’re told that chefs don’t actually use trade secrecy laws.

intellectual property

This doesn’t fit, because intellectual property generally does not apply to chefs’ recipes. But copyright law generally does apply to comedians’ jokes. Although a specific subset of intellectual property law does apply to recipes (trade secrecy), there’s another answer that says trade secrecy. So that answer would be correct over this one, which isn’t specific about trade secrecy.

16%

patent law

This doesn’t fit, because patent law generally does not apply to chefs’ recipes

12%

the combinations of ███████████ ██ █ ██████

This doesn’t fit, because the ingredients in a recipe are analogous to jokes. Comedians protect jokes, and chefs protect their recipes. But we’re asked for what’s analogous to the relationship between comedians and copyright law, not between comedians and their jokes.

trade secrecy law

68%

social norms

The relationship between comedians and copyright law is that comedians don’t use copyright law, even though it can apply to protecting jokes. This isn’t analogous to the relationship between chefs and social norms, because chefs do in fact use social norms. We’re looking for something that chefs don’t use.

PrepTest 149 - Section 2 - Passage 3 - Question 18

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