This weeks lecture was all about Intellectual Property (Copyright protection). At the start of the lecture it stated that anything creative at all is covered as a intellectual property.
Something what I thought was intresting to highlight was how as a employee, anything you create is automatically owned by your employer. It was mentioned how this can be exploited which there was a very intresting example of 1930’s - 1960’s comics, which the artists were work for hire which means they got paid at the time which was very little. Now these IPs are making billions from movies. My lecturer said Superman sold its rights for $10 to $100 back in 1930. This is crazy to me which out of curiousity I wanted to look more into this. A report from 2023 said Superman was in the top 50 highest grossing charcters which has made around $7 billion.
The lecture also covered different types of copywrite protection which I was already familar with most however some was new to me. Patent, which is usually product based which can take years to get one. An example of a Patent was with phone technology, for example the iphone face ID could get a Patent to give them exclusive rights to use this new technology (for around 20 years).
Another think I did not know of was how the ‘TM’ logo beside trade marked logos is completly nessacary. I always thought protected brands needed to display this once they are protected. However a R logo (Registered) was said to be much more trusted which I think this would more be something to show in your brand logo.
During class there was a section which covered copywrite and what happens if someone dies. This got me thinking about one of the biggest copy write topics, George Lucas selling Star Wars to Disney. Simply as he sold it to Disney nothing will happen to Star Wars becoming public domain (usually it becomes public domain after 70 years).