Taken from
http://www.motherjones.com/news/exhibit ... perty.html :
VENICE INTRODUCED the patent concept in 1474. Infringers were fined 100 ducats.
IN 1982, Motion Picture Association of America head Jack Valenti told Congress that âthe VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone.â
A DAY AFTER Senator Orrin Hatch said âdestroying their machinesâ might be the only way to stop illegal downloaders, unlicensed software was discovered on his website.
BILL GATES had the 11-million-image Bettmann Archive buried 220 feet underground. Archivists can access only the 2% that was first digitized.
AMONG THE 16,000 people thus far sued for sharing music files was a 65-year-old woman who, though she didnât own downloading software, was accused of sharing 2,000 songs, including Trick Daddyâs âIâm a Thug.â She was sued for up to $150,000 per song.
MICROSOFT UK held a contest for the best film on âintellectual property theftâ; finalists had to sign away âall intellectual property rightsâ on âterms acceptable to Microsoft.â
ONLY ABOUT 5% of patents end up having any real commercial value.
IN 2002, Valenti described Hollywoodâs antipiracy campaign as âour own terrorist war.â
THE CLASSIC civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize canât be aired or sold because much of its archival footage is copyrighted.
TO PREVENT PIRACY of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, a Montreal cineplex monitored audiences with metal detectors and night-vision goggles and checked popcornfor video cameras.
U.S. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY is valued at $5.5 trillion, equal to 47% of our GDP and greater than the GDP of any other nation but China.
BY PASSING the memorial Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, Congress added 20 years to copyrights. âI Got You Babeâ now wonât enter the public domain until 2061.
NINETY-ONE pending trademarks bear Donald Trumpâs name, including âDonald J. Trump the Fragranceâ and âTrumpâs Golden Lager.â He failed to trademark the phrase âYou're fired.â
NEARLY 20% of the 23,688 known human genes are patented in the United States. Private companies hold 63% of those patents.
HUEY NEWTONâS widow is trademarking the phrase âBurn, Baby, Burnâ for use as a BBQ sauce slogan.
IN THE LATEST ROUND of a 13-year battle over the title âSurf City USA,â Huntington Beach, Calif., filed for a trademark last year. A state senator from Santa Cruz retorted, âYou canât trademark a state of mindâ and proposed a Senate resolution declaring his city to be the real Surf City.
GEORGE FOREMAN has earned $113 million by lending his name to a grill.
LAST YEAR Mister Softee spent $170,000 to track down and sue 45 competitors for copying its blue-and-white trucks and playing its copyrighted jingle.
âSENSORY TRADEMARKSâ include a duck quacking (AFLAC), a lion roaring (MGM), yodelling (Yahoo!), giggling (Pillsbury), and a âpre-programmed rotating sequence of a plurality of high intensity columns of light projected into the sky to locate a source at the base thereofâ (Ballantyne of Omaha).
FOR INCLUDING a 60-second piece of silence on their album, the Planets were threatened with a lawsuit by the estate of composer John Cage, which said theyâd ripped off his silent work 4â33â. The Planets countered that the estate failed to specify which 60 of the 273 seconds in Cageâs piece had been pilfered.
A FRENCH DIRECTOR had to pay $1,300 after a character in his film whistled the communist anthem, âThe Internationale,â without permission.
AFTER INTEL was sued for libel for calling someone a âpatent extortionist,â one of its lawyers coined the term âpatent troll.â
THE WORLD WRESTLING Federation changed its name to World Wrestling Entertainment after the World Wildlife Fund sued over the rights to âWWF.â
HOOTERS SUED a competitor for stealing its âtrade dress,â i.e., the packaging of its waitresses.
THE PUBLISHER of Super Hero Happy Hour removed âSuperâ from the comic book title after Marvel and DC Comics stated they own the phrase âsuper heroes and variations thereof.â
42% OF ALL VIDEO files shared online are pornographic. No porn-sharing cases have yet been tried in the U.S.
LAST YEAR Disney and other media companies sued two small L.A. shops for selling $15 piñatas of Winnie the Pooh, The Incredibles, and Nemo.
THE ROCK AND ROLL Hall of Fame sued several journalists for naming their website âThe Jewish Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.â They renamed it Jewsrock.org.
AFTER ROSA PARKS sued OutKast for using her name as a song title, the group and their label settled by paying for a Parks tribute CD and TV special.
PATENT LAWSUITS have more than doubled since 1992.
RENTAMARK.COM makes money by claiming ownership of 10,000 phrases, including âchutzpah,â âcasual Fridays,â â.com,â âfraud investigation,â and âbig breasts.â
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.âs estate charges academic authors $50 for each sentence of the âI Have a Dreamâ speech that they reprint.
THE VILLAGE PEOPLE refused to let their songs be used for a documentary called Gay Sex in the â70s because they want to be thought of as âmainstream.â
Alvin Toffler wrote:The illiterates of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.
Take a moment and consider joining
my Patreon group, where I share personal development updates and plans for the future...