Image of Popeye Enters Public Domain In the EU

Several readers wrote in to mention that the copyright on the image of the character Popeye expired in the EU as the year began, 70 years since the death of its creator Elzie Segar. The US will have to wait until 2024, 95 years after Segar's death. Only Popeye's image is free of trademark in the EU; the name "Popeye" is still under copyright by King Features Syndicate. Popeye made his first appearance in a comic strip in 1929 and became hugely popular in the 1930s. The Times claims that Popeye now moves $2.8B of merchandise per year. Le Monde's coverage (in Google translation) mentions the real-life people in Segar's early experience who inspired some of the Popeye cast of characters. Popeye himself was based on the prize fighter Frank "Rocky" Fiegel.

Comments

Don't worry, Olive!

[paiute]

The very existence of Mickey Mouse guarantees that nothing will ever again enter the public domain in the good old USA.

Re:Don't worry, Olive!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_copyright#Opposition_to_copyright

I am a creator (music in my case) as well and I think limits on copyright actually have a value for society, specially if it comes to abandoned works, which is the majority of created works...

Re:Don't worry, Olive!

[Anonymous Coward]

In 500 years, assuming two descendant per generation
and 4 generation per century we get 2^20 descendants: approximately a million.

How are you going to divide this intellectual property among the family members ? And in 800 years, we get 2^32: 4 billions. Meaning mostly everyone in America will be your descendant (unless your line dies fairly early leaving you with no descendants). Does it make sense passing intellectual property that far ?

Re:Don't worry, Olive!

[Anonymous Coward]

Characters going into the public domain is repayment to society for society enforcing your exclusive rights over the characters for a number of years. If you don't like them going into public domain, tough luck - without them eventually going public domain there's no good reason for society to enforce copyright.

The alternative, I think, is paying property tax on your copyrights just for holding them.

The idea is to encourage you to make new things, after all, not to keep making money off the same old idea. Of course that doesn't really work with modern copyright terms...

Re:Don't worry, Olive!

[zwei2stein]

Its this simple: Why should anyone make money from one idea over again for rest of ther life?

Socienty does not benefit by encouraging certain people to parasite on it for rest of their life for less than days job. Society benefits from those people continuing to create.

If you, an artist and want to make money, keep producing art. That simple. Works for every other job, you are not superhuman deserving different treatment.

If someone can succesfully make cheapie knockoffs without your cooperation, then they deserve money and you don't, because you had opportunity to be first, to be brand, to abuse new fad before it becomes old fad, to be The guy to come to when they want to make knockoffs and just missed it or werent good enough.

Socienty does not need institutionalized freeloaders.

Re:Don't worry, Olive!

[Korin43]

This isn't even someone profiting from it for their entire life. It's about someone profiting from it 95 years after they die.

Re:Don't worry, Olive!

[Ed Avis]

I think rms put it best:

Control over the use of one's ideas really constitutes control over other people's lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult.

I wouldn't even say that characters entering the public domain is 'repayment' for anything. Rather, the exclusive right for a limited number of years is a special boon, and freedom for everyone to use the idea is the default state in the absence of special laws creating a new kind of property.

Re:Don't worry, Olive!

[slimjim8094]

Pinko? How old are you?

It's a social contract (also known as government). The rationale is that the government will protect your little ideas in exchange for the fact that - after you make your money off them - everybody else gets to use them, for anything, freely.

Otherwise, what's the benefit? Society as a whole doesn't give two shits for your ideas, and won't protect them, unless there's something in it for us.

Re:Don't worry, Olive!

[cpt kangarooski]

It is an asset of some sort. If copyright entered the public domain purely on merit that the owner is dead, you would have to also release his other properties freely to the public.

That's not the basis of it, though. The copyright has a limited duration. It used to be 14 years, with the option to be renewed for another 14 years. Then 28+14; then 28+28. And then it was life+50.

A life term is just another span of time, after all. Of course, the duration ought to be whatever, in combination with the breadth of the grant of rights, best serves the public interest. This is probably best accomplished by not automatically granting copyrights, instead letting authors who want them step forward to get them (thus allowing many works to instantly enter the public domain because the authors don't care), and by having short terms with multiple renewals, so that works whose authors at some point stop caring about copyright, can enter the public domain sooner than later. Term lengths might vary depending on the kind of work; a book probably gets more use out of a long copyright than a piece of software or a newspaper does.

On the whole, though, a term of 25 years maximum (i.e. 1-2 year terms, renewed periodically to get to the 25 year total) is probably more than enough for anything. After all, the point of copyright is to encourage authors to create and publish works, which are minimally protected for as short a time as possible. If an author is willing to create a work for a 25 year copyright, it is foolish, and a waste of public resources, to grant a longer copyright. It's just like finding someone to paint your house for $1,000, and then insisting that they accept $10,000 instead.

Re:Poopie the sailor person

[apathy maybe]

Except that I very much doubt that the name is copyrighted, or else everyone should be getting into trouble when they write it down. Wikipedia wouldn't be able to have an article about Popeye etc. etc.

Now the name might be a trademark, which is something which doesn't expire (unless not defended, or unless it becomes generic).

Dear folks, please don't use the term "intellectual property" at all. Trademarks are quite different to copyrights, which are very different to patents. They are all covered under different laws, and of those three, I believe that only copyright is international.

(Oh, and a great example of long copyright encouraging dead artists to keep producing yes?)

King Syndicates Should FIght back...

[tkrotchko]

... by inventing new characters.

Seems to me that it doesn't advance the sciences or arts by relying on copyrights that have been around longer than anybody who works at King.

Re:disney

[Tony Hoyle]

Mickey Mouse will *never* enter the public domain in the US - Disney has bought a lot of senators to make sure that doesn't happen.

By the time mickey is public domain in the EU, the US copyright law will be 200 years after initial copyright.

Re:Poopie the sailor person

[apathy maybe]

I fail to see how having copyright extend 75 years past the death of the artist encourages said artist to produce anything either before or after they die.

I am alive today, right now, and can not imagine the world 75 years after I die. Why should such a distant future (at least 75 years into the future, and hopefully many more), affect my decision making process now regarding creating new art work?

Surely I should be creating art work now to benefit myself right now? (Or more likely for most of the good artists, they would be producing stuff anyway.)

Having a long copyright does nothing to benefit artists, but only parasites and other scum.

Some websites with arguments against copyright
http://www.digitalproductions.co.uk/index.php?id=52
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-copyright

Re:Basic legal vocabulary

[Capsaicin]

IANAL, but my understanding of copyright v trademark is ...

... wrong.

Copyright is a right (held against everyone else in the universe) inter alia to copy a work (eg. an artistic work) and to create derrivative works. Copyright (in almost every juridisdicition around the world) arises automatically on the creation (technically when a work is first rendered in material form) of a work capable of being the subject of copyright (i.e. not a single word). In a few jurisdictions registration of the right is required before any legal action for infringement may commence. Copyright subsists for a limited (but historically growing) term. Subject to limited fair use exceptions, you may not make a copy of a work subject to copyright for any purposes.

Trademark is the use of a word (or words), image colour, scent etc.. in trade. It requires registration and subsists as long as registrations in maintained. Use other than trade use is not restricted (well that's not 100% true, you can't use it say to defame a company). You can use the name 'Coca Cola,' for example, as much as you like (look I just wrote the trademark 'Coca Cola') providing you are not doing so to sell anything. You can tattoo it on your forehead if your want, but beware any logo may additionally be subject to copyright.