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Additionally, to own copyright, you would actually have to _create_ a product/movie/etc. How any patent holder can sue without actually creating or using their
by mluiten 15y ago
Additionally, to own copyright, you would actually have to _create_ a product/movie/etc. How any patent holder can sue without actually creating or using their own patent is beyond me.
- arethuza 15y agoWhat makes you think ownership of copyright isn't transferable?
- nicholasjbs 15y agoCopyrights are indeed transferable. In fact, many of the most well-known free software projects rely on this fact (e.g., should they want to relicense, or to make it easier to defend copyright ownership in court by having a single legal entity behind it). mluiten might be referring to the fact that copyright only applies to "original works of authorship fixed in a tangible medium of expression." (See http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html) That is, copyrights don't cover ideas, but creative works in some fixed form (e.g., a painting or a piece of software).
- rubinelli 15y agoI think the point mluiten is making is that you have to actually create the content (or pay someone to create it) to have copyright, whereas you don't have to implement anything to have a patent granted. Since content creation is much more expensive than content distribution, there would be no economic incentives for "copyright trolls."
- bad_user 15y agoActually there are lots of copyright trolls, especially in the cases where the content is cheap to make (as in time invested) and cheap to distribute -- like news articles, music or photography. Say you've got a popular photo, you can transfer the litigious rights of it to a copyright troll and that troll will then sue everyone using it. Kind of like what RIAA is doing.