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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
That bids fair to become a record keeping nightmare. Talk to the folks at Project Gutenberg about "Rule 6" clearances on works copyrighted in the US before it became a signatory to the Berne convention, and the hoops they have to jump through to be relatively confident some works are now in the public domain. (And look at the fun and games because the same work may be both in the public domain and copyrighted: works got published as serials in magazines, and that copyright lapsed, but the book version is still under copyright...)
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Dennis, that has always confused me. According to one part of the copyright law, you can't claim a copyright extension by refiling a new copyright unless the material has had significant changes, but authors copyright their books that were in original magazines. If there were no changes, how can the copyright by the author hold up. Can you explain? I'm seriously curious....
(And the US is still not a true follower of Berne, because of all those post 1923, extension exceptions... It's not just life + 50 or 70....)
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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
Right now, it's simple: either life + 50 years or life + 70 years, depending upon where you live. And you don't need to do formal registration to have copyright: that exists automatically upon creation of the work. Registration is still advisable in many cases because it establishes a formal date from which copyright applies, and allows for recovery of larger damages in the case of infringement.
Copyright was created in the first place to encourage creators, by giving them an exclusive right to benefit from their creations, and copyright period is intended to benefir the author and the author's heirs.
Going to a 20 years, plus renewals every ten years, re-introduces the whole idea of formal registration to have copyright. Who keeps the records? With whom do you renew? How do you do so, and what does it cost?
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I believe there should be a formal copyright process and repository, and it should not be free. Copyright is, above all, about economic value. Even in the Old West of America, the people who got to keep the land paid to have it surveyed, and registered. By not requiring registration, you get all the "orphan works" problems we are wrestling with now....
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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
Look more closely at trademark law before you make that assumption. It's a lot more complex than copyright. Taking Mickey as an example, he's undergone significant changes since the original "Steamboat Willie", and I very much doubt a trademark would protect all of them.
The general advice is that yes, you can theoretically file for a trademark on your own, but you really don't want to. If it's valuable enough to trademark, you really want a lawyer to help you navigate the process.
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Dennis
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