Re: [dvd-discuss] Patented copyright ...

["Arnold G. Reinhold" <reinhold(at)world.std.com>]

At 2:57 AM +0200 5/23/02, Tom wrote:
>On Wed, May 22, 2002 at 02:20:22PM -0400, Arnold G. Reinhold wrote:
>> One of the many flaws in this scheme is the need to show that an
>> infringer actually copied the material in question from a work you
>> created. Suppose the alleged infringer proves he sequenced the gene
>> directly from a mouse? With patents, that's no defense. With
>> copyright, it seems to me it would be.
>
>you sure? try to find a kid in india that's never heard of mickey
>mouse, but drawn a few cartoons with a character looking exactly the
>same. then try to publish those cartoons without disney sueing you to
>hell and back.
>

I didn't say you wouldn't get sued, but independent creation is a 
defense in copyright cases, as I understand it. You might have a hard 
time convincing a judge that any kid on the planet today hasn't been 
exposed to Mickey Mouse or even if he hasn't that you did not give 
him enough hints so that it was effectively a derived work.  However 
if you found drawings that look like Mickey but were indisputably 
drawn 200 years ago and got sued for publishing them, I believe you'd 
win.

By the way, section 102 (b) of the copyright law says:

"(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of 
authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of 
operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form 
in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such 
work."


Arnold Reinhold