Another Example of How Long Copyright Term Can Harm Public

I saw this article about one and half months ago but did not share with this forum until now:

     http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/08/30/EDGR4EE66B1.DTL

This article refers to The Patent Reform Act of 2005 in House Bill H.R. 2795. The bill attempts to redefine "prior art". We have argued about the harmful effects of long copyright term. Here is another example of how long copyright term can harm public if the bill becomes a law.

When copyright term is long, it becomes more difficult for the little-known works to be available to the public. As the consequence, the holders of these little-known works can turn the already disclosed but not widely known methods into patents. Unless the patent examiners use Google's new index to little-known books, we will see new patents that cover the methods already disclosed in these little-known books.

This does not look good for the future generations.

Joseph Pietro Riolo
<josephpietrojeungriolo[_at_]gmail.com>
<riolo[_at_]voicenet.com>

Number of days left until 1-1-2019 when all knowledge of 1923 in the land of the U.S.A. will be freed from their copyright owners' prisons: 4,823

Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this post in the public domain. Received on Tue Oct 18 2005 - 01:40:01 GMT