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Image of Popeye Enters Public Domain In the EU

Posted by kdawson on from the yam-what-he-yam dept.

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.

7 of 229 comments (clear)

  1. Don't worry, Olive! by paiute · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    --
    If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
    1. Re:Don't worry, Olive! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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...

    2. Re:Don't worry, Olive! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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 ?

    3. Re:Don't worry, Olive! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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...

    4. Re:Don't worry, Olive! by zwei2stein · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

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      -- Technology for the sake of technology is as pathetic as eschewing technology because it's technology.
    5. Re:Don't worry, Olive! by Korin43 · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    6. Re:Don't worry, Olive! by Ed+Avis · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

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      -- Ed Avis ed@membled.com