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Copyrights/Patents are Public Domain?
x3 sent us a link to an article running on InfoWorld that talks intelligently about intellectual property and the public domain. Its an extremely well written piece summing up what many readers of this site probably feel about the subject.
Patents of course last something on the order of 17 years after invention to keep competition off of the idea. Copyrights last the lifetime of the creator plus about 75 years after death. Trademarks can last different periods based on what kind of trademark... Whther it is registered or simply has been in use by the company for a while...
An interesting thing to note is that a lot of institutions like universities are much more concerned over there rights to intellectual property outside of patents... Gatorade for instance has well run past a patent expire date. The trademark and the license to use it by Pepsico is worth millions every year to the University of Florida. 5 million I think...
I'm taking a course this semester in History in Tech PErspective. One thing I found interesting is that during the 1700's in Britan - Inventors would develop something, patent it, but not get called on to make more of the machine, not leading to the riches they envisioned. Instead of collecting royalties, prospective buyers simply made their own version of the patented device.
Few examples: 1733 "flying shuttle" by John Kay, 1764 "spinning jinny" by James Hargreanes, and 1769 "water frame" by Richard Arkwright. All three (at the time) were major developments in cotton processing mills.
Similar happened with the development of the steam engine. Though the expertise required got the key players more royalties than their cotton processing counterparts.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Many people get this confused and think, congress has the power to grant copyrights. Copyright is a limitation of congress' power, not a power unto itself. If a copyright fails to "promote the progress of science and useful art", then congress is exercising a power it was never granted.
It's amazing how the terms of public debate on this issue have shifted towards the copyright holders. When you talk to an average joe about this they usually think there is nothing wrong with extending copyrights indefinitely, "after all it's their Mickey Mouse, they own it just like I own my car". People seem to be unaware about what the consitution says on this issue. In a more rediculous example of overly long copyrights: Did you know you could get sued for singing "Happy Birthday to You". No joke, see here. It does not run out for another 20 years!
Yes, perhaps that (protection of individuals) was the original intention. But with the arrivial of the corporation, which is treated in US law as an individual, this changed. Add the Fourteenth Amendment ("... nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws..."), which was intended to promote equal treatment of nonwhites, but was (and is) in fact used much more frequently to expand corporate rights, and you get a feeling as to why we are in the situation we are...
After Germany lost World War I, Bayer was forced to give up both trademarks as part of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.
It doesn't seem to have been mentioned in this thread, but the US Supreme Court heard arguments just this week on the issue of constantly extending copyrights.
See this and, of course, Slashdot it.
The only good weather is bad weather.
"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation."
Thomas Jefferson, in Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 6, H.A. Washington, Ed.,1854, pp. 180-181.
In patent law, holding a patent allows one to prevent infringers from importing their product into the US.
I think its similar for copyright law also.
i.e. If you live in the "Axis of Evil", infringe all you want; just don't try exporting into the US sphere of control.
Keep it in your bloody head then and shut up. I can personally build anything you can build if you don't sic lawyers on me first. Furthermore, no one demands anything of copyright holders. They just go about their business doing as they please until the copyright holder shows up with a lawyer saying "You can't invent the telephone, I invented it first so you've gotta buy it from me. All of you. And your kids. And their kids. Your great grandchildren can do as they please. Until we change the laws again, of course..."
But it's interesting that you choose Bell... if he hadn't invented the telephone, it would have been invented by Edison within a few years time. He was employed by Western Union attempting to complete this project at the time.
If neither of them had invented it, someone else would have. The fact they got there first is no reason for the rest of mankind to pay a levy or do without.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
There's a good article on Lessig and Disney in this week's Economist.
I was listening to the Monsters, Inc. commentary track recently, and there's a mention of a yodel that's heard in the background through one of the doors. They actually wanted to use a different (and supposedly funnier) one, but they couldn't find the rights holder to clear it.
So Disney's copyright extension lobbying effectively damaged one of the movies they distributed.
What you're describing pretty much looks like continental Europe's Authors' Rights (droits d'auteurs) system. In this system, an author (writer, composer or director of a movie) owns a non-transferable right to its creation. This includes a right of getting royalties for its performance, but more importantly a 'moral right' to control what is done with the work. A writer or her heirs can prevent someone from writing a sequel to her novel. A producer cannot impose cuts in a movie against the director's will (hence only 'director's cut versions of European directors are shown. The only exception is that software production is exempt. Your code belongs to your employer.
Concerning patents, the author says what I think. But please remember: Without the copyright, there couldn't be a GPL. The central point of the GPL (that you have to include the source with every distribution or make it easily available) couldn't be enforced without the copyright.
Unix makes easy tasks hard and hard tasks possible. Windows makes easy tasks easy and hard tasks $29.95.
That was kind of the point. Extended copyright terms can't possibly encourage John Lennon and Janis Joplin to write more songs, so how does this promote science or usefull arts? It doesn't, it only lines the pocket of the entity holding the rights to the songs.
People's desire to believe they are right is much stronger than their desire to be right.
Copyrights (and patents, but not trademarks) exist so the creators of new ideas / written works CAN make money, and thus are encouraged to keep on making new things.
Ergo, the often-quoted balance between "public good" and "private benefit" that is copyright. The private party wants to enjoy as much economic beneift as possible from their works. The public wants to just enjoy the works, as cheaply as possible and as often as possible.
Copyright is how we pay authors, artists, and computer programmers. (Let's just ignore the GPL for this ONE argument, can we?). It's not that it's main purpose isn't to make money; it's that we as a society are "hiring" IP producers to make IP, and if they don't continue to produce a re-evaluation of their agreement (copyright law) might be in order.
Learn how to parse a sentence.
Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States says:
The relevent sentence here tells us that one of the Legislatures powers is to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, and lays out a means to that end by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. Therefore, the purpose of the Legislatures power with respect to intellectual property as set forth in the Constitution is to promote the spread of ideas. The economic advantage secured to authors and inventors is the means by which we encourage them to create more intellectual property, and therefore spread their ideas. The fact that the economic advantage is for a limited time ensures that the ideas will become a part of the public domain and secure the spread of those ideas to the general populace for all time.
Most countries with national copyright laws are signatories to the Berne Convention . The relevant article is (from memory) Article 5 -- National Treatment.
The National Treatment article provides that a copyrighted work in one country (say, the US) shall receive copyright protection in all other Berne Convention countries (say Australia), but under the relevant national laws of the second country. In other words, works copyrighted in the USA receive copyright protection in Australia -- but under the provisions of the Australian law, not the US law. Importantly, the article provides that US copyright holders do not need to do anything special to be covered by Australian copyright law.
The Berne Convention has been supersceded by various WIPO agreements but the principle of National Treatment remains. As others have pointed out, there is increasing uniformity in national approaches to copyright laws, so the differences are seldom important.
So, to answer your questions:
A work created in the US with a valid term of copyright for 75 years would only receive protection for 10 years in your example second country. Such a short term would earn that country a special place on the US State Department's list of non-IP respecting countries they don't like.
(Your second question isn't 100% clear) Yes -- the copyright is still valid in the second country, at least until the shorter term is up. Then, under national treatment, it should receive no protection -- but I think TRIPS (Berne's successor) might have complicated this.
No -- the originating country is not authoritative on the length of the copyright outside its borders -- the length of copyright is determined by the national legislation. However, outside the 10 year term the work would not be copyrighted -- so would it still qualify for national treatment in the US? This is a technical distinction sure but it may be important in areas other than determining the length of protection.
Probably as clear as mud but there you go. A lot has changed and I think even IP lawyers get lost in the detail.