On the subject of lifetime, what is a company or corporations lifetime?
As far as I am aware copyright still has a limited time while the author is still "alive". In the case of a corporate entity the copyright would only last a period of time (which eludes me at this moment). Patents, from what I understand, can only be awarded to individuals. I could be wrong and how I've heard it reported in news articles would make me believe otherwise. If someone could clarify I would be most appreciative.
Amongst my many unsavory habits is that I am an intellectual property lawyer, and so I happen to know this off the top of my head. Anyone may learn for themselves at the USPTO's excellent website (
http://www.uspto.gov) or the equally excellent Library of Congress copyright website (
http://www.loc.gov/copyright).
1) Only individuals can be inventors of record for patents or authors of record for copyrights. However, patents can be assigned to corporations, and works for hire can likewise belong to corporations. The main difference is that a patent must be explicitly assigned to a corporation either directly or under the terms of an employment agreement. A copyright can be a "work for hire" and belongs to the person or entity who hired its creation, at the moment of creation, with no explicit assignment being necessary.
The only entity which cannot create copyrighted material is the US Government, although it can recieve the assignment of copyrights. US Government scientists can apply for patents, which are usually licensed back to an academic entity (or simply retained by their inventors!)
European copyright law (and possibly American law, sometimes - see Gilliam v. American Broadcasting Corporation) includes a separate right, called the "moral right," which is much harder to alienate and basically gives an artist the right to see that their creations are not tampered with so as to negatively affect their artistic vision. It's very complicated. All good IP attorneys *ahem* include language in licenses which purports to transfer the moral rights as well, but these are as yet largely untested.
2) The term of copyright for a work created by an individual was recently extented from "life of the author plus fifty years" to "life of the author plus seventy years." This was done by Disney's pet congresscritters as the copyright on the original Mickey Mouse was about to expire, which would have put Mickey in the public domain - an unspeakable horror. In the case of joint works, the last author to die starts the clock ticking.
3) For works made for hire, or anyonymous/psuedonymous works, the term of copyright is 95 years from date of publication, or 120 years from date of creation, whichever is shorter. This is in line with past terms, which have always worked on the assumption that the average author lives 25 years after creating a copyright, and therefore it is reasonable to give an "immortal" entity like a corporation roughly the same protection. Why 25 years, I don't know.
St. Marc
