How many of you knew this?...
Every single patent Musk came up with for his Tesla operation...HE OPEN SOURCED THE PATENTS......
OPEN SOURCE...
........In that, HE DOES NOT OWN THEM. They are PUBLIC.
THIS is the guy that just bought Twitter.
You know what? If he says he's gonna open source Twitter, I am leaning towards believing him.
How does Disney get away with keeping rights for decades old characters, many of whom were already in public domain for centuries?
Because frens here do not know patent law.
Certain patents last 14 years, others 20, etc. The problem I holder's didn't believe it was long enough for the originator to exploit the monopoly.
Eventually the law was changed so you could file extensions. Then it was more extensions.
Mickey isn't covered by a patent, but by copyright, which also had a limit. But the music and movie industries decided to fight for copyright extensions. Long story short it is life of author + extra. If it is a patent or copyright created by a corp.Corp., it gets even weirder. Copyright is 95 years + extensions.
THEN, it depends on when you put either in place, as you are grandfathered in and follow those rules.
All this to say, the original Mickey copyright has expired, but others have not.
Trademarks and copyrights are not necessarily the same thing as a patent.
They are copyrights and trademarks, different rules.
This is not patent related. It is copyright related.
Copyright normally extends some 25 years beyond the death of an author/creator.
It is likely that Disney trademarked the characters, which is a way of establishing intellectual property rights in this case. Trademarks do not expire automatically, unlike copyright or patents.
As far as I know....
Copyright is rewritten by Disney. Patent is physical stuff, Vopyrightus drawn and written stuff.