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One key point though is that like copyright, patents are for a limited time. Moreso for patents than copyrights. Number of patents that expired last week: tho
by jcl 17y ago
One key point though is that like copyright, patents are for a limited time.
Moreso for patents than copyrights. Number of patents that expired last week: thousands. Number of copyrights that expired in the last decade: zero.
- timwiseman 17y agoI think that is a bit of an overstatement, but it is a point well made. Copyrights have been extended to great lengths and retroactive extensions have been passed, so they expire at a very slow rate which is not at all fixed.
- jcl 17y agoI'm not sure if you are saying that copyrights have been expiring, or if you mean that copyrights aren't expiring now but will eventually. If the former, you have my curiosity... Could you describe a case in which a copyright's term could have expired in the past decade? As I understand it, the Sonny Bono Copyright Act extended all copyright terms by twenty years, and that was eleven years ago.