How bad is the Intellectual Property Rights Chapter of the TPP? Beyond odious and beneath contempt

[Faryn Balyncd]

12. Patent/copyright law ALREADY makes a mockery of constitutional intent, & deserves REPEAL.

Patents & copyrights have far exceeded constitutional intent, which is expressed in Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution, without which patents & copyright have no constitutional basis.

Article 1, Section 8 states:

(The Congress shall have Power...)...
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

An indication of what the framers thought reasonable for the "limited Times" can be seen by the Copyright Act of 1790, which granted copyright protection for 14 years.

But under the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, bought & paid for by corporate lobbyists, copyright protection was EXTENDED RETROACTIVELY to 95 years after publication, and to 70 years after the death of the creator, or, for corporations, 120 years after creation.

The greatest mockery of the Constitution is that retroactively extending protection for works that were willingly created (and offered to the public under terms far more favorable to the public, and even retroactively extending protection for many more years for works acquired by non-creating corporate speculators under law which granted for lesser years of protection), does NOTHING "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", but only serves to give a windfall to the current owners of such works.




In practice, "intellectual property" law is perverse: granting protection to "Happy Birthday" to a non-creating corporation (Warner/Chappell Music) until 2030 for a song which evolved, dating to at least 1893, and published in the public domain as early as 1912.......... and also granting copyright protection to the current owners of "This Land Is Your Land", despite Woody Guthrie's explicit copyright notice

"This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."

(and the fact that the copyright was not renewed by the then-owners in 1972.)




Intellectual property law has been perverted to the extent that it no longer serves "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", but only to enrich corporate interests, often non-creating corporate interests, and even interests whic have acquired those rights through fraud or the bribing of lawmakers. It certainly does not "promote the general welfare", or advance other goals of the framers.

We would be better off if all "intellectual property" law were repealed.

Pushing for even more draconian law, secretly, under the guise of a TPP "trade agreement" is a mockery of constitutional intent, and a betrayal.