back to article It's World IP Day! Celebrate by making money from a dead teenager

It's World Intellectual Property day! So it's time again to think about the plight of IP lawyers, tens of thousands of whom are forced to undergo the daily indignity of people shaking their heads at them as they try to explain why everything in the world, including your own thoughts, are owned by someone else and you should pay …

  1. hellwig
    Joke

    Absurd(™)

    This™ article™ is™ absurd™. We™ clearly™ need™ stronger™ protections™ in™ place™. Why™ should™ copyright™ ever™ expire™?

    Copyright 2016 all rights reserved.

    1. deshepherd

      Re: Absurd(™)

      Your comment is almost as absurd as the Lego catalog from a few years ago when they were majoring on Star Wars sets and it seemed almost every word (and all character names ... apart from, for some reason, Han Solo) were adorned by a ™ symbol. Left a big question as why uniquely it seemed LucasFilms had either chosen not to or more likely had been unable to trademark "Han Solo"

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Absurd(™)

        Well, I'm not greedy. I only want the © copyright on the word "the".

        I'm astonished that nobody registered the processing of oxygen by a human body during the open door policy time (someone in OZ registered the wheel once by way of demonstration, though). Does anyone know if that has actually ended, or have they now admitted they remain the usual combination of "clueless and not interested" we find in most government bodies?

  2. asdf

    Forever copyright should be a birth right in the land of corporate capitalism

    May Steamboat willie (and no other book after 1928 or whatever) ever go into the commie public domain again. A great work should not reward only its author but 5 generations down the line when if they should happen to date rape they have the money to run to Mexico. Disney is here to protect us all.

    1. asdf

      Re: Forever copyright should be a birth right in the land of corporate capitalism

      Ok so Andrew Luster didn't get his silver spoon from books but the point still stands. Max factor had plenty of IP related income as well.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Somewhat incredibly, Congress passed this law without actually specifying what the standard should be for assessing whether a patent should stand or be cancelled.

    Why didn't any of the many, many IP lawyers swirling around Washington catch that before it became law?

    The IP lawyers actually wrote the law, specifically WITHOUT specifying what the standard should be so that cases involving cancellation of patents could move glacially through the court system

    1. asdf

      Billable hours next question.

  4. Herby

    Simple solution...

    1) No software patents.

    2) Public review period BEFORE the patent is granted to show "prior art" (much of which is unpainted!).

    3) Loser pays in patent suits.

    4) Wishful thinking (*SIGH*)

    1. veti Silver badge

      Re: Simple solution...

      There's already a "public review period" before a patent is granted. You can nip on over to your patent office right now, and read through the patent applications not yet granted for yourself.

      Of course there'll be about half a million of the things, so you should probably budget at least a couple of hours for the job.

  5. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    Amazing wht they will do to protect "The Rat" (¬ C 2016 John Smith 19 )

    Yes I think people should be able to make a living by thinking cleverly.

    Not their great-great-great-great-great-whatever grandchildren.

    1. Captain DaFt

      Re: Amazing wht they will do to protect "The Rat" (¬ C 2016 John Smith 19 )

      "Yes I think people should be able to make a living by thinking cleverly.

      Not their great-great-great-great-great-whatever grandchildren."

      Most of the time, those 'kids' get nothing, or one of them gets a one time payoff.

      The ones making the money of a creatives persons work for generations to come is usually a corporation that bought, stole, or swindled the rights to said work.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Copyright lasts for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years (a figure that itself keeps growing as lawyers Disney realize they can continue to make money from famous works).

    FTFY

  7. Frumious Bandersnatch

    In a weirdly synchronous way

    I'm marking this (at least the sub-head) and the article about Chernobyl by listening to Neutral Milk Hotel's "Two-headed Boy".

  8. fpx
    Devil

    Certainly Anne Frank is an good poster figure for copyright extension because her life was cut short. Depriving her descendants of income for the remainder of her life expectancy is a late victory for murderous nazis. Basically society can profit from the killing of copyright holders, since we'll be able to enjoy those works in the public domain earlier.

    On the other hand, extending copyright to the author's descendants for 70 years beyond their life time is already a concession in cases where an author dies shortly after publication. Copyright terms based on publication date would be fairer, as is already the case for corporate works. But then you get authors like Sonny Bono whining about losing the right to profit from works that they published 50 years ago.

    What a mess.

    1. Natalie Gritpants

      Not to be picky but Anne Frank didn't have any descendants or dependants when she died. If she hadn't died the diary may not have been published or may not have made any money.

      1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

        "Not to be picky but Anne Frank didn't have any descendants..."

        She was survived by her father, Otto, who was the sole survivor of the whole family. He published Anne's diary and died in 1980.

    2. Ian 55

      Living Dead Doll

      You also get people like Cliff Richard whining that they would have stopped being paid for a couple of hours work they did over fifty years ago if their copyright wasn't extended.

      Had anyone gone into the 1950s recording studio and gone 'No, wait! You will only be paid for fifty years for this!!' everyone would have laughed themselves unconscious at the idea that what they were doing had a life of more than a few months.

      Even if they had any conception that it would last longer, they'd still have recorded it.

  9. disgruntled yank

    Strange to say

    That I have known quite a few persons who have read The Diary of Anne Frank, generally in a paperback edition and at school. In no case did the purchase seem to bankrupt them, their families, or their school districts. Barnes and Noble will sell me a paperback for $7 or so. Powells will sell me a used copy for about $4. The District of Columbia Public Library has many copies available to borrow. Yes, somebody can be said to be profiteering, but No, this is not substantially suppressing cultural transmission.

    I agree wholeheartedly that the American copyright laws are absurd--a bill that combines "Sonny Bono" and "Intellectual Property" in its title seems to me to speak for itself.

  10. STERA

    Polish Anti-Semitism

    How unsurprising to see a Polish organisation trivialising the holocaust in general and Anne Frank in particular. This isn't news, but for The Register to use it to highlight the contradictions surrounding IP is very disappointing. One wonders if you are employing members of the Labour party. If anyone wants to know what the fuss is about I recommend you read this article by Tim Marshall: http://www.thewhatandthewhy.com/anti-semitism-anti-shmemetism-why-the-fuss/

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