To: TheManuz
I am hardly an expert on Copyright or Patents.
I do know how it effects me and some of their history.
Copyright and Patent is hardly a new thing. If I remember correctly, it's not even a U.S. concept itself. But in general a Western one born out of early industrial era and merchant class becoming the new authorities and business running.
In general Copyright is a body or work, generally things considered art. So books, shows, paintings, plays, music, etc. Patents where machines and processes, so a particular design of a lathe or a specific manufacturing process. Both are a form of legal monopoly. The idea is, if businesses were to come together and incorporate, or technology to be monetized, then you need to insure if something is made the creator has a chance to profit from it, because to come up with it originally requires much more energy and money then it does to duplicate it. Patents were originally 14 years now 20 years. Copyright I think started at 50 years, after 1978 is now 120 years in the U.S. These are U.S. laws; however, most countries have passed laws to support and enforce U.S. Copyright, the result is the U.S. for most of the world has become the defacto Copyright and Patent institution. Although I know the U.K. has a longer established body. Today more copyrights and patents are filed from outside the U.S. then inside the U.S. When something is out of Copyright or Patent, it becomes part of what is known as the public domain, meaning anyone can now use it.
Key points involving U.S. Copyright:
1.) Significant Difference, effect on Patents, it was ruled at one point quite a long time back, that the general concept can not be patented, but if a significant difference was made on the process or machine that the Patent does not apply to the different machine or process. A famous case study, was a person designed the first pull tab for soda cans, but wanted too much for each tab, so a different design was done and that is where we get today's pull tab that nearly all but one company uses. That company that uses a different pull tab, that bought the original Patent. This significantly diluted the strength of a Patent, in the case of Apple, touch screens maybe patented, but it's a specific touch screen. Let's say HTC makes a touch screen out of different material, Apple can't hold their Patent over HTC. But if HTC uses the same materials and base technology, then Apple can.
2.) Fair Use, it was decided along the way that certain bodies may take a portion of a body of work and not have to pay for it. In this way, schools could copy a couple key pages from a book to provide as a handout or a more modern turn, a review site could take a small clip of a movie to reference in their review.
3.) Prior use, Prior ownership, Prior Knowledge etc... Who came first is often a question, so if I come up with a machine, and you come up with a machine around the same time, I go to patent it, but you can prove you came up with it first and even sent me information on it, the patent could be shifted in your name if I was awarded the patent.
3.) Copyright versus Patent, Software is both copyrightable and patentable. The code itself is text which is copyrighted, running on a system is a patentable. There is a lot of debate about this, because a section a C code for example could be used in another application, whether this is fair use is often debated. It also gives a very weird kind of strength to programmed code. Also Copyright can be used as a way to prevent other copyright or other patents through point 3.) So, if I write a white paper outlining a process or machine, that work is now Copyrighted, not only that but now their is prior knowledge, so if you design a machine, and patent it, I could claim I outlined that first, that Patent is mine. It is in this way the whole thing is a mess.
4.) DMCA, along with the DMCA it outlined all you have to do is mark something with a CopyRight, name, and date, and the Copyright is yours without registration. However, in general you can't sue for money, but you can issue take downs , etc... Almost every newspaper has violated this at least once.
5.) At one point natural things could not by copyrighted or patented. So an algorithm, like how to calculate the day of the week of the calendar of any given year, is all math, this can't be copyrighted. Life naturally occurs so this can't be patented. The ladder has been changed. As Monsanto lobbied hard. And now they own the patents on just about every genetically modified product out there. So if some of their seeds land in your field, they can sue you for growing their specific bio engineered plant. In the future this is going to be horrible, think about stem cell research, someday, a company might be able to own your biological code.
6.) Companies also lobbied hard on who gets ownership, it was decided that if something was made while you worked for a company, the company may claim ownership unless they dismiss it. Apple is a classic case of dismissed technology. Woz had to offer it to, I think HP first, but they declined it. Also if you use company materials they can claim ownership. In effect every engineer since that decision that you hear about making a great new technology, you hear they built it out of working in their garage. It's not a great America is great story, it's we are forced too.
There a bunch of other things, but these are some of the largest changes to copyright and patents besides extending them that are generally taught to engineers at my former University.
In practice today, like the company I was at, patents are filed simply to have legal leverage to not be sued to the ground. Copyrights are used to prevent anyone from getting anything else. A patent lawyer told me at a former company, that's why they weren't taking my patent, they had several for ICM like products already, and didn't need anymore, instead they would just whitepaper it. He said every company in our business is in violation of our patents and we are in theirs, we just don't bother because we are all deadlocked. It has nothing to do with the original purpose anymore. In effect, as long as you have enough quantity, they are used to flex muscle from time to time, if a bigger company needs to pick on smaller competition from coming up through litigation to in effect bankrupt the smaller company, or they are used by a dying industry to hold themselves a float, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The SEC case against IBM for example was where it didn't work. In this way big companies stay big and small companies get bought up. Now most startups are looking to be bought... unless it's an entire new industry. Like what Yahoo/Google/Amazon/Facebook etc got to do.
So most people who understand these base things, no longer have much respect for the system, and see it as only holding 'America' back, if there is one thing that is killing U.S.'s economic and technological development it's this. For any government looking the other way is going to get to advance much faster. Japan did it to the U.S. with the Automobile. Japan literally had people come take plant tours, took pictures of all the machines and parts they could until they could replicate it themselves. China is doing this to the U.S. right now, with computers. The fact that the RIAA can sue a teenage girl into the ground is insane through this system is just adding salt to wounds. SOPA, is just one more thing that will break the U.S.'s back down a little bit more.
