heh, this kind of thing might be perfectly legal soon thanks to the Orphaned works bill. Any art work that isn't copyright registered properly (fee required) will be considered an orphan and anyone can use it as their own.
Interesting... Particularly as there are a lot of international treaties on copyright.
In all fairness, fee or not, some sort of registration on property (created) would weed through a lot of crap that is claimed.
"We coined the term iPhone back in the 1920's" just to get a piece of Apple's pie will no longer hold water. They will go back to the records and say
"According to our records, you never had anything to do with the term iPhone, have a good day!"
"We coined the term iPhone back in the 1920's" just to get a piece of Apple's pie will no longer hold water. They will go back to the records and say
"According to our records, you never had anything to do with the term iPhone, have a good day!"
Actually, those two things have little to do with each other: trademarks are a whole different issue from copyright. No one has copyright to a name.