> BTW: The modules were "Copryright 1964 DEC" so the patent is long gone.
You're confusing copyrights and patents. In the US, patents now last up
to 20 years from date of application. (It used to be 17 years from date
of grant.)
<rant>
Copyrights effectively last forever. Officially it's now 95 years (for
works for hire), but over the last 30 years, the term has gone up by 30
years. Every time a Disney film is in danger of going into the public
domain, they sic their lobbyists on Congress.
Most people have forgotten that the whole point of the Copyright system
was NOT to make sure that Disney could make money on Sleeping Beauty
forever. The purpose was to ensure that people (and companies) would
create works on which they would have a monopoly for a LIMITED TIME,
after which the work would become public domain, for the benefit of
society.
Imagine if the great works of literature from centuries past, including
the works of Shakespeare, the Greek classics, etc., still were under
copyright, and the only way to get them was to buy licensed copies from
Disney. Furthermore, Disney would put them on "moratorium", making them
unavailable for ten year stretches, in order to maximize their return.
http://www.public.asu.edu/~dkarjala/
</rant>
Anyhow, the point is that if DEC copyrighted something in 1964, it
IS still covered now, and the copyright belongs to Compaq unless it's
been sold to someone else.
Received on Wed Oct 20 1999 - 17:39:45 BST