4 ms·

> the answer may depend on which country's laws we are talking about? Even if what you say is true in country X, it might not be true in country Y. Not really;

• skissane 6y ago
  > Not really; through WIPO, the US has "rationalized" every other signatory nation's IP laws to match its own. That's not really true though, there are some real differences between copyright laws in different countries: * US copyright law appears to recognise the ability of a copyright owner to relinquish their copyright to the public domain pre-expiration, German copyright law denies them that ability * US copyright law has the concept of fair use; Australian copyright law lacks the concept of fair use, although it does have the significantly narrower concept of fair dealing * Most EU countries recognise the concept of "moral rights of the author" in their copyright law, US copyright law generally speaking does not (it does for copyright on visual arts works under The Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, but not in general) * EU has the concept of a database right, which protects the contents of a database from copying even if the work of assembling was mere "sweat of the brow" involving no originality; the US does not, and mere "sweat of the brow" does not meet the copyright standard in the US (see Feist vs Rural Telephone Service Co) * US law says that accurate photo-reproductions of public domain 2D works are themselves public domain – see Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp – there is no independent copyright in the photo since there is no originality involved (selection of camera angles etc), and mere "sweat of the brow" is not enough for a copyright to exist. It appears – although not completely settled – that UK law, by contrast, has a weaker threshold of originality, such that mere "sweat of the brow" is enough. This was the crux of the dispute between the UK National Portrait Gallery and Wikipedia. Since it never went to court, we can't know for sure what the UK law actually is on this topic * UK law provides special protection to specific works. For example, even though Peter Pan is out of copyright, there is special legislation requiring commercial productions based on certain Peter Pan works to pay royalties. Likewise, there used to be an "eternal copyright" on the King James Bible and Book of Common Prayer – that "eternal copyright" has been abolished, but still applies by a grandfather clause until the late 2030s. By contrast, the idea of specific works being legislated special IP protection is rather unheard of in the US (outside of trademark law, wherein the US does it too) There's a lot more fiddly little differences. The Berne Convention, WIPO, TRIPS, etc only mandate the broad outlines of IP law, the fine details are up to each country and different countries do different things. Every country has its own statute law and case law and differences inevitably emerge