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Comment by cm2187 | Hacker News Reader

What I don't understand is why copyright applies for so long (life + 70y so typically 120y+) and why intellectual property (patents) applies for such a short period (20y). Fundamentally it is the same thing. And one could argue that code could be treated either way.

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Because the Disney corporation doesn't want Mickey Mouse to fall in the public domain. I've said before that it may behoove us to simply amend copyright in a way that gives Disney infinite copyright, while everything else gets ten years. Call them an "irreplaceable cultural giant" or whatever else euphemism you want for "lots of money". Require a yearly tax that's just below what they pay in lobby money currently. To make it "fair", you could say "first ten years copyright is free, then it's X per year per work, then it ramps up until it reaches what Disney can pay.. I mean Z, which was determined after market analysis"

Only the original Steamboat Willy cartoon would even rise to the public domain. The character as we know him today is thoroughly trademarked, which does not expire.

All anyone would be able to do, is distribute free or paid copies of a historical cartoon film.

> All anyone would be able to do, is distribute free or paid copies of a historical cartoon film.

But perhaps you could also legitimately create derivative works? If you didn't offer them for sale, perhaps trademark would not apply (not used in commerce)? It would be interesting for them to demonstrate injury.

You would only be able to create new derivative works of the character as he was in Steamboat Willy. Anything that we now recognize as being characteristic of Mickey Mouse would still be under copyright, because it was developed in later films.

Trademark wouldn't stop you from including Mickey in your new cartoons any more than it would stop you from showing a McDonald's.

You could use this chap[0] in your film, but you couldn't use this more recognizable figure.[1] Disney is at absolutely no risk from unauthorized films starring a black-and-white, whistling mouse.

[0]https://formaementis.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/steamboat-w...

[1]http://images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/6500000/Mickey-micke...

Copyright and patents are not "fundamentally the same thing". A copyright gives you the right to exclude others from copying a work. A patent gives you more than that right, it gives you a monopoly over an idea (or at least a more or less vaguely defined implementation of an idea). A patent gives you the right to exclude others from using that idea or implementation even if they discovered that idea on their own and didn't copy anything.

My understanding of copyright is that it applies to the idea too. If you change the names and wording but keep the plot of a novel, even if the text are not strictly identical, you could still be sued for breach of copyright.

If you "change the names and wording" you're actually copying and making a modification. However, if by pure chance you came up with some say detective story that has a plot very similar to one of the existing billion other detective stories, no can sue you unless there is sufficient evidence that you actually infringed a copyright.

* no one can sue

Independent reinvention is a complete defense for copyright (you can't infringe copyright if you didn't copy), but not for patents (someone you've never heard of can sue you).

The courts are less clear on that. There's no statutory language that gives you copyright to the idea of a novel (which is dangerously close to genre if you ask me).

No, you can't argue that code can be treated as a patent because then you could argue that poetry can be treated as a patent and you'd wind up in a nonsensical hell of never being able to write another line of code, poetry, or prose because you'd be patenting coding and writing itself, essentially. It would be illegal to write a "hello world" program, for example. Actually, that's not that far from what's currently illegal under patent law, so I should say that you can't argue that code can be treated as a patent and make a rational argument out of it (Congress can argue that, in other words).

Many audio and video encoding algorithms are patented.

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