Jonathan_Sparks

Yes, it could have monumental effects. Like I said earlier to u/angelisticth0ughts, there's a major "gig worker economy" (almost 30% of all workers) that could argue that the IP they create (like you said, product/software engineers) that could then use that case holding against the employer and argue that they do in fact own the IP they created.

u/neuromorph, technically, they did not win or lose, last go 'round! What happened was that the Circuit Court disagreed with the artists who created the characters, but they appealed it all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) and then it settled outside of court before SCOTUS heard the case.

Mickey Mouse is actually a Copyright, and Disney hires gobs and gobs of lawyers and lobbyists every ten years or so that the Copyright statute comes up for them, so that they can get the Copyright term extended. At first, I think it was only for "the life of the author plus 30 years" and then they extended it to 40 years, then 50, 60, 70, I think they're around 80 years, now.

I don't see Mickey entering the public domain really anytime soon.

The Disney TM (the mickey logo and Disney name) will remain in perpetuity, so long as Disney keeps up with their filings (which I'm sure they'll do) and remain a company that Netflix doesn't buyout ;-)

u/billsilverman1124 that's a very interesting idea. Anti-trust law has not, to my knowledge, been applied against copyright IP before, at least not in a case of this magnitude. Obviously the studios are merging a great deal, but I think it's a stretch to consider ownership of comic book copyrights a "monopoly." They can't, for example, prevent other studios from making movies about super heroes, so long as the new movies are not about marvel copyrighted heroes. Said another way, as long as they create entirely new super heroes, Marvel couldn't stop them, and therefore, do not have a monopoly that anti-trust laws would or could prevent.

u/PYTN, sadly I think public domain rights are dying out. Disney, and others, appear to be able to extend the rights indefinitely, and I think the economics involved have sort of "locked in" the status quo.

This actually reminds me of housing prices. After WWII, the government wanted to incentivize people to buy new homes, so they created the "Homestead Exemption," meant as a temporary incentive (this allows people to reduce a solid amount of their taxes for the home they purchased). But, it worked like wonders, too well even, and caused millions of families to go out and buy homes. This raised the price of homes, and home values, which was then what a lot of family's money was tied up in. So, if the government discontinued the Exemption, housing prices would plummet, which would cause people's net worths to also fall, and may even cause a market crash! Because of all of that, they locked in the exemption, even though it was intended to be only temporary. We still have it today!

I don't think this example is nearly as dramatic as the Homestead Exemption, but I think that's illustrative of what could happen, economically, and probably why Disney and other similar companies will shell out loads of money to maintain the status quo.