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Originally Posted by doctorow
Interesting. The paper seems to raise issues that have been discussed by the US Copyright Office in their discussions of copyright reform. Just curious how the US Patent and Trademark Office fits into this.  |
Overlapping jurisdictions. Both protect new ideas. (More accurately, the way in which the ideas are expressed-I'm saying this poorly but you can say or do the same thing in different ways. The thing itself isn't protected by either copyright or patent, only the way in which you've done it.)
One obvious (to me) change is shorten the ridiculous length of copyright. I don't think a single length will work for all situations but I can see a 'longer of the options' type of thing. For example, copyright lasting the life of the creator or 25 years, whichever is longer. That protects a work whose creator dies before it is published (think A Confederacy of Dunces) as well as during his life.