I could recall copyrights expiring 50 years after the author has died. What's true about that?

I'm not sure about the europe regulations, but I know that in the US of A. some firm lobbied heavilly (and won) to get it extended to 70 years. Otherwise their 'property' (the worlds most fameous mouse) would have become public domain!

rgds,

turbor

What's the next step? Extend it to forever?

As far as I recall, copyrights expire 70 years after the owner dies.

Patents expire after, I believe, after 20 years (no matter whether the owner is dead or not ), and they need to have an explanation of how to make it work. Patents offer much more protection, but they can not be applied to everything (software, music, e.d.), and when the patenting period is over, everyone will know how to make it.


~Grauw

I'm getting dizzy with all these numbers...
There are other threads somewhere on this forum that deal with this. I used to think software copyrights lasted shorter too, but unfortunately(?) their not. These numbers (give or take 20 years) count for almost all countries in the world.

Copyrights lasting 70 years isn't *that* strange... Suppose your father (or even your grandfather) wrote a very famous book... Say, Moby Dick. Isn't it fair that after he dies, his children and grandchildren get the profit from it instead of whichever company who wants to publish it? And because the copyright is still present, they can also stop people from modifying the text, or disallow 'bad' (for whatever reason) publishers from printing it and making money with it. And after a (long) period, the copyrights *do* expire, and that's why Moby Dick is one of the books you may freely download over the internet.

~Grauw

And yet another great reason why wealthy authors should initiate their own publishing company.

It is MAXIMUM 70 years after the writer dies... The thing is that names, characters and titles (which we usually rip from games) are NOT protected by copyright... Only the code and/or un-altered graphics are...

The shit we usually rip when we make a remake of a game is protected by trademarks. Those last 15 - 25 years BUT are hardly ever applied for due to costs. Many game titles, characters and names are never trademarked due to high cost.

Art (in other words, graphics) is copyrighted too, so I'm pretty sure that includes character designs.
Game title's are indeed usually trademarked, but I don't see how names don't fall under normal copyright either.. Afterall, the names are part of the story.

Check the correponding sites... Names and titles aren't protected. All copyright does is protect what you literally made. If I write "Hello All!" you can't write that anymore... You're free to write "Hi All' tho... Same goes for graphics (yes, art). I can't rip a metal creature from SD-Snatcher and use it (unless I modify it enough) but I can make a metal creature of my own.

Now, if I were to make a smiley face (or even just one that looks like a smiley) I'm fucked... That's a trademark and that you can't mess with... This is why companies now do trademark all their new titles... Same goes for patents; but since both patents and trademarks are so absolute they last a lot shorter than copyrights.

Note tho, that in case of SD Snatcher only the code, music and some of the graphics would be protected. Not even the storyline would be since it's a rip off too... (Bladerunner) And this shows how weak copyright is in these cases. There was never any case against SD-Snatcher which was such an obvious (but good) rip off. Hell, the picture on the Snatcher manual looks like it came straight from Blade Runner. Even the guy looks like Ford.

So... Hail! to anarchy and for me everthing that's not blatant copying goes... There's nothing wrong with a nice SD-Snatcher remake and Konami wouldn't have shit of a case against you if you make it for an OBSOLETE system. (Nor would they give a crap) Now, if I were to make SD-Snatcher Advance... That would be a different story...

Unless ofcourse I would call it "KILL ROBOT" and would make graphics *like* theirs and music *like* theirs... Then they wouldn't have a case at all. (Like with Blade Runner)

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Now, if I were to make a smiley face (or even just one that looks like a smiley) I'm fucked... That's a trademark and that you can't mess with... This is why companies now do trademark all their new titles... Same goes for patents; but since both patents and trademarks are so absolute they last a lot shorter than copyrights.

Actually you're wrong. Smileys are copyright free. The original creator of the smiley did not want any money for it so he gave away the copyrights to everyone. Try Google, you'll find some articles on it.

Heh... That's just too great to be true... Me and my dumb luck... Can I still change it to Bart Simpson? Too late? Ack...

I could ofcourse edit my post and ask what the hell you mean by smiley... But hey...

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Actually you're wrong. Smileys are copyright free. The original creator of the smiley did not want any money for it so he gave away the copyrights to everyone. Try Google, you'll find some articles on it.

Heh, actually... Not my dumb luck... According to abcnews.go.com/sections/us/WolfFiles/wolffiles158.html you are wrong. He didn't patent the smiley on time, that's why it's public domain! Ofcourse you'd still be half-right cause there is no patent on it... Maybe that why we see them so much.. (DUH!)

In Soul Calibur II there's a character that's BASED ON character designs by some dude. It has mentions of that all over the place, with (c) to the original dude, even though the character in the game has differences.
If something looks like something else close enough, it's a copyright violation. The difference between "Hi All!" and "Hi All" is just too small.

Note this changes from country to country. In japan, adding subtitles to a video made the subtitled video a 'new product', free from copyright. I don't know if that's still the case, but that's how it was years ago.

Calling SD-Snatcher storyline a Bladerunner ripoff is pretty broad, as that means you can call 80% of the cyberpunk genre ripoffs from eachother.

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>>Actually you're wrong. Smileys are copyright free. The original creator of the smiley did not want any money for it so he gave away the copyrights to everyone. Try Google, you'll find some articles on it. << Heh, actually... Not my dumb luck... According to abcnews.go.com/sections/us/WolfFiles/wolffiles158.html you are wrong. He didn't patent the smiley on time, that's why it's public domain! Ofcourse you'd still be half-right cause there is no patent on it... Maybe that why we see them so much.. (DUH!)

Hmzz. I must have read the romantic version of this story then