mini-rants on IP law

[kaylarudbek]

1) Patents are property and there is a database at the USPTO where you can check to see who's the assignee of record, just like if you were buying a house you get the chain of title checked before you buy.

2) If you own a patent
a) check to make sure you're the assignee of record
b) check to make sure that the patent hasn't expired
particularly before you go trying to sell your patents to a third party.

3)I am so incredibly glad I am a patent lawyer and not a copyright lawyer the train wreck of orphan works, but if I had the power to change the copyright laws, I'd say let's scrap the Berne Convention, go back to a requirement for registration before copyright could be enforced, and change the copyright term to life + 28 years.

4)Of course, I'd also go back to patents having a 17-year life span.

5) I'd also support a different type of IP protection for ephemeral works, with a 10-year maximum lifespan. Sort of like the British Design Right or some of the German protections that aren't a full patent (software, patterns, etc.)

(cross-posted to ip_debate)

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I have a copyright law issue right now, and I wonder if you could help. There are three splendid books about the rise of Nazism and related issues, published in Britain but by non-British authors: Germany puts the clock back (1937), by the American journalist Edgar Mowrer; The War against the West, (1938) by the Hungarian philosopher Aurel Kolnai; and World in trance (1943), by the German journalist and historian Leopold Schwarzschild. So far as I can see, they are all still under copyright. They are all important works, and none of them have ever been reprinted. I would like to scan them and publish them on a non-profit website, but I have no way to find out who the rightful copyright holders are, and the fact that nobody has ever reprinted anything by these gentlemen strongly suggests that professional publishers cannot do so either. What should I do? Would a strongly worded warning about using the contents of the website for profit, and an appeal to any copyright holder to come forward, be enough?