Not correct, the US operates a "First to Invent" system, not "First to File", its almost the only Nation in the World who doesnt use "First to File". Under "First to Invent", provided an inventor is diligent in reducing an application to practice, he or she will be deemed the first inventor, and entitled to a patent, even if another files a patent application (reduces the invention to practice) before the inventor. That often happens when two individuals think of an idea, and one is slow in filing it.

To resolve that the US has a Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences, who in itself reports and is accountable to United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, to decide who invented it first, not filed it first. A system I personally applaud hugely, as it give due weight to the real inventor, not the one who was the fastest down to the patent office.

Not claiming its easy - its never easy. It is however easy to make allegations. That's why we all have due process of Law. If the Law is wrong and unworkable, put in to get it changed. You are fortunate in the US, its vastly easier in the US than elsewhere to get a Law changed.

Opinions are not enough, they have to be proved, that's not unreasonable. If someone took money from you on purely the basis of an allegation, you'd be more than Hissed off. If you've sussed out an easier way to regulate this, I have no doubt at all the Legislature would love to hear it.

Meanwhile, we all have no choice but to follow the Law of our respective Countries that we all endorsed via the ballot box - to do anything else invites anarchy and mayhem.

Regards
Zy

Wrong! Please read: http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/.  You are correct in regard to patents however a patent is not the same as copyright never has been.  The patent system is the way it should work and is what I have been saying all along.  If you want protection you register and then you have it for a finite amount of time.

Allegations mean nothing, people are making allegations all over this forum, I can make all the allegations I want but unless I have the money to take it to court or am lucky enough to get a lawyer willing to help for little or no pay it is just about as affective as doing nothing when going up against a large corp like Disney.  If you think otherwise you need to pay more attention to what happens in the states.

As for getting laws changed in the states uhm if things worked like they were designed then you might be correct but that isn't how the real world works, even with our "reative" ease it still takes years and truckloads of money to get a law changed.

Ballot box that is another subject in and of itself, I didn't vote for any of the Jackasses that run my country, as such i have endorsed nothing.  If I could find a way to easily make my point heard while still being able to live my life and take care of my family I would however time is not on my side.

Re copywrite, okie doke, thanks for that, learn something every day.

I hear the frustration re changing Laws, I am not saying I do not share it. However until things are changed there is little option but to go what we have, wherever we are. Not to invites mayhem.

Regards
Zy

Well, first of all, Weird Al lives under the Fair Use clause of the Copyright Act.

Second - Disney can't steal their ideas anymore? Really?

The Bothers Grimm, Jacob Grimm died in 1863 - under modern copyright, their copyright would have extended through the first ten years of Disney, 1923 to 1933. But that's merely indicative.

Because Fantasia was released in 1940, featuring:
The Nutcracker Suite, by Tchaikovsky - who died in 1893.
The Sorcerer's Apprentice, by Dukas - who died in 1935.
The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky. 1971
Dance of the hours, by Amilcare Ponchielli, died 1886
Night on Bald Mountain, by Modest Mussorgsky, died 1881

Five, count'em *five* separate pieces of music - in the public domain at that tome, none of which would have been available under modern copyright law.

And yet Fantasia itself is going to be protected by copyright until - 2035.

So sorry - 5/8ths of Fantasia would have been illegal under today's law. And let's be blunt - Fantasia is *exactly* what would be impossible to make today - seven suites, all of them drawn from a previously existing work, each with different set of heirs to deal with, only one actual living artist (Stravinsky) to work with. If the 18 year old compnay formed by Walt Disney had tried to create it today, it would have been sued into non-existence.

We will never see another Fantasia, because we have made it impossible for a small, creative company to *ever* produce another Fantasia.

And that's a damn shame.

Jonnan

Amen to that Brotha!

Exactly why copyright should be the same as patents, a finite time to hold something in a monopoly/hostage!

The reduction of fair use is one of the big things I find wrong with the copyright system.

The literal 'Mickey Mouse' legislation (Disney were the big movers in the 'Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act') extending copyright to essentially forever (and I'll bet my bottom dollar they'll be at it again when it comes up again.) is another.

Corporations conducting searches and initiating lawsuits without a shred of evidence for thousands of dollars is a third.

The entire DMCA is a fourth. Not one shred of that legislation is anything more than a rotten sack of garbage oozing foulness.

Bottom line. Copyright all the way back to when copyright was invented until about 40 years ago had a lifespan of 40-50 years... Copyright now has a lifespan of 200 years, things made in the 1950's will still be copyrighted when we are all dead. This destroys the idea of public domain and holds hostage 90%+ of the work that is out there. Most of it rotting away since it has no commercial value. All those wonderful games we remember are going to stay dead because the companies that hold the copyrights won't do anything with them.

And heck for the really valuable stuff there is trademark. Mickey Mouse will NEVER become public domain because it is both copyrighted and qalso under an entirely different set of laws which are trademark.

IMO copyright should be 50 years from the time something is published. Drug/Software/Engineering patents can cost millions/billions of dollars to develop and yet they only last 10-20 years. What gives an artist or megacorp a special right with copyright over patent?

We need to revive and enforce the ideal of public domain.

No...it's copyRIGHT .....

When the spelling is correct the meaning sensibly follows...namely 'right to copy'.....

Opppps   

Regards
Zy

Laws differ between Countries - clearly - but as I understand it in the US, there is a finite time for copyright. There appears to have been some transition clauses put in for the 1978 changes, but nontheless, it appears to me that there are time limits. As always of course there will be difference of views on what they should be and their circumstances, that'll never change, but there appears to be time limits.

Have I got that wrong ?

Regards
Zy

Here's an interesting problem I've always thought about. Purely from a moral/ethical standpoint, what is your opinions on the following scenarios? Not a legal standpoint, as this will vary from country to country.

1) I ask a architect to draw me plans for a house. I then proceed to build not one, but two houses on different properties from the same plans.

2) Same as 1 above, but I bought the plans mass-market, instead of having them made for me specifically

3) I fancy a certain genre of art, e.g. anime and ask a well-known artist to draw me a picture and pay the artist for it. I receive the paper copy, proceed to scan it in and use part of it as an avatar on the Sins forum

4) Same as 3, but bought a collection of artwork from the artist, instead of having it made for me only

5) Same as 3, but I the artist delivers it digitally to me

6) Same as 4, except for being digital

7) I take my CD of songs I bought and rip it to MP3 to install on my portable player.

8) Install a game on my laptop and my home PC so I can play while travelling.

Legally these are mostly different. And I rarely understand why. 7 is punishable by a jail term in the US if I am not mistaken, or at least getting your pants sued off you, and gets you branded a pirate, and 8 mostly too, I think.

You are correct, however I would say that it is an infinite time as almost 200 years of pretection is hardly what any 70 year being would finite.  I am not going to argue definitions of the word as I know those!

Even if you take the timeframe out, I still don't know what makes something that can be copyrighted more important than something that can be patented.  In fact I would say that in just about all cases a patent covers something that is far more important than anything a copyright would cover.

Okie Doke - Ta


Second in the queue behind you

As I understand it (in UK) the differences are:
Copyright - Creative or Artistic expression of an idea. Software was added into this one by default as more applicable than the other two below.
Patent - Original Invention or Creation of a unique basic concept or theory
TradeMark - An indicator of Origin (not ownership) in relation to products or Services

As there are more definitions than Countries on Planet Earth, I'll body swerve round the Pandora's Box those three just opened up   

Regards
Zy

My view is that the time frame is different due to the differing nature of the protected work. The length of time for patents is limited because you have an absolute monopoly on that item, while a copyrighted work generally has competition. True, you may not be able to use MS Office or *insert additional example here*, but there are other products by other companies that do much the same thing.

braamvh - to answer by number

1 - Unfair. Unless the plans were purchased explicitly stating it was for multiple uses, you are cheating the guy. If he had known upfront you would use it multiple times, he either wouldn't have sold you the plans or charged you more for them.

2 - See above.

3 - Fair use. You are not profitting from his work, nor are you depriving him of sales.

4, 5, 6 - see above

7 - Fair use, IF you own the CD. Ripping music you haven't purchased is something else.

8 - Can go either way. As long as you're the only one using either computer there's no problem. If someone is playing your desktop while you're away, there are issues. Legally, this varies from company to company as to whether they allow it or not (most insist you only have it installed on one comp at a time, not in use)

The above reflect my understanding of current US law, which except for 8 matches my personal ethical stance anyway.

The price of games is totally unrelated to how much piracy does or does not exist. If by some supernatural force or magic we were to make all the pirates in the world go away the price of games would remain unchanged.

Either way i see no way they can enforce this. First of all for them to know you are pirating something they would have to be able to monitor your net traffic and what it is you are doing and downloading. That is a MAJOR invasion of privacy.

At best they can monitor the amount you download and say well he is using a lot of bandwidth he might be doing something illegal downloading 20gig files every day. That is so random and inaccurate though its ridiculous.

This taps into far larger issues than piracy because the fact is piracy isn't that big of an issue. If companies make good games they will sell regardless and there will be no visible impact on the bottomline. This game is a the perfect example. No protection and just a simple online activation and they have sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

The bigger issues that pop up are net neutrality which is a very highly debated issue right now and internet privacy. For them to monitor what you are downloading they would have to look at every single thing you download. The torrent websites work in a way that directly contradicts them knowing what you are downloading and who you are downloading it from because it all comes in tiny pieces from multiple people. The whole neutrality issue has to do with the internet companies monitoring and dictating where you can and can not go which is just total bull.

So like i said this is a pipe dream that directly infringes in some of the basic rights all people have like privacy to combat a problem that isn't even that widespread. It will never happen short of the new nazi world order forming and taking control of everything we see and do.

I am not wanting to start a argument here, but you state that I cannot do what I please with things I have purchased, and paid a full consultancy fee for (the architect's plans). He controls what I do with it, even after I fully own them, or are supposed to. What do I pay him for, then, exactly? What do I get in return? Only a license to use the drawings once?

Would the same go for a contract, then? I can't have a lawyer draw up a SLA and issue it to multiple people, filling in the correct name at the right time? That kind of thing is done a lot where I work (the IT industry). You pay the lawyer his consultancy fee and use it as a template.

But I am allowed to copy music from one media to another, even though I only paid for them once? The RIAA is arguing that this is violating their copyright, and I have no right to do it. AFAIK the DMCA backs them up on this.