Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
One thing to consider is that until fairly recently, the US didn't recognize foreign copyright.
|
Fairly recently being 1976.
Since the passage of the Mickey Mouse Copyright Bill, courts have extended protection back to 1909, if the following criteria are met:
- First published outside of the United States;
- First published in a language other than English;
There might be one or two other criteria, but those two are why Disney has to pay royalties for material that ostensibly was in the public domain, in the United States, when they started their project that led to the court case.