Same applies to inventors and patent. Except that those have to be paid for when you file them and do expire. Many people had their inventions only become big once their patents had run out.
New Bill to Limit Copyright to 56 Years, Would be Retroactive
- Thread starter LuisCarlos17f
- Start date
Ryujin
Legend
Never said that it was. In fact, as a content creator myself, I would quite like to be able to defend my own IP without needing truckloads of cash that I don't have.
I create content as well besides working as a copyright attorney, and I wouldn’t represent myself in a copyright case. I’d have to shell out $$$, same as anyone else.
Realistically, you can’t take cash out of the equation. For ANY interaction in the legal system in a capitalist society. Until all attorneys are government agents, throwing money at a lawsuit is always going to have a potential effect on the verdict.
Flip the script: imagine being a small or solo holder of copyrights, and BigCorp decided to challenge your IP. Unless you win on a pretrial motion, you might be fighting towards a Pyrrhic victory. You could win the case and still lose your IP as BigCorp outspends you to bankruptcy,
That’s essentially what happened with Fawcett Comics’ Captain Marvel. DC sued Fawcett, claiming that character infringed on Superman…and lost. Captain Marvel was deemed not to be an illegal infringement of the copyrights in Superman, meaning Fawcett had perfectly valid copyrights in CM. But it cost Fawcett so much to achieve that victory that Fawcett soon went bankrupt, even while Captain Marvel titles outsold Superman comics. When Fawcett folded, DC Comics bought up the rights to Captain Marvel, which they own to this day.
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Ralif Redhammer
Legend
The Battle of Five Armies would have been a perfectly acceptable in a Warhammer Fantasy Battle movie. For the Hobbit, it was just one more excess on top of an already overburdened tale.
That is the unfortunate truth of the matter. Having worked at a major law firm that did a lot of IP for a very big client, I've seen just how much money can be thrown at the smallest and most blatant of infringers, in cases where they probably could've just held up one of the hideously cheap bootleg t-shirts as evidence and called it a day in court.
That is the unfortunate truth of the matter. Having worked at a major law firm that did a lot of IP for a very big client, I've seen just how much money can be thrown at the smallest and most blatant of infringers, in cases where they probably could've just held up one of the hideously cheap bootleg t-shirts as evidence and called it a day in court.
billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him) 🇺🇦🇵🇸🏳️⚧️
It's such an interesting case.
Fawcett won the initial lawsuit, but they also suffered a partial defeat when DC appealed. Their win was partly dependent on a claim that DC had failed to copyright their newspaper strips and thus the Superman copyright had been abandoned. The funny part of it all isn't simply that they won, rather, the legality of Captain Marvel as a legit Superman copy was established by the same appeal that ultimately torpedoed their efforts. While the appellate judge ruled that Captain Marvel wasn't a copyright infringement even though is powers were largely the same, the stories relied on in the initial case may actually have violated copyright and that needed to be retried.
When the appellate court sent it back for retrial to determine if the stories really had been copied, Fawcett decided it wasn't worth it. Superhero titles were in a bad slump at that point so they got out of that biz by selling off to Charlton Comics (which eventually succumbed to a later slump with most of its heroes ending up with...wait for it... DC). But Fawcett did return to making comics into the 1960s with Dennis the Menace and soldiered on to 1980.
trappedslider
Legend
Ironically i bet we're giving this more thought than the senator did.
Not a shred of doubt about it.
MGibster
Legend
You can't copyright a recipe. So Coca-Cola's "secret" formula and the Colonel's blend of elven herbs and spices aren't protected.
Trademark and copyright are two very different things. A trademark protects symbols that establish the identity of a particular product. The Coca-Cola bottle's distinctive shape (I think), the Rolex crown, and the Nike swoosh are all examples of trademarks. If you see a shoe with that swoosh, a bottle with that shape, or a watch with the crown you know exactly who made it. Generally speaking, trademarks don't come with an expiration date. A copyright protects the original expression of an idea and expires after a set period of time.
MGibster
Legend
I regret not using numerals.
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