While the Bill is being passed under urgency  – with the reason for the indecent haste unexplained and unjustified – it will have an easy ride through, with 111 of 122 MPs voting for it. Only the Greens, Chris Carter and Hone Harawira opposed passing the Bill under urgency. The move was supported by National, ACT, the Maori Party, United Future, Labour and Progressives.

So the substance of the Bill was uncontroversial for most MPs, despite some semantic gymnastics from Labour MPs attempting to explain why they originally supported it in harsher form than present, then opposed a more reasonable version, and are now supporting it again.

There is no question that the use of urgency for this Bill is an abuse of process. The file sharing reforms have kicked around for several years, since controversy erupted after first being introduced (in more draconian form) by the previous Labour Government. There is no explanation for the sudden need to race it through now.

It is also clear that some MPs still have a poor understanding of the issues. For example, in the House last night National MP Katrina Shanks made bizzare comments suggesting that any file sharing was illegal, and that people who choose to install file-sharing software on their computers must be doing so to infringe copyright. I just so happened to be downloading the latest version of LibreOffice using µTorrent when she said that…

On the substance of the bill, there is no question that it is a substantial improvement over the original proposal. In particular, the original draconian termination provision is now only available to a Court, and only if the judge considers:

“suspension of the account holder’s account is justified and appropriate in the circumstances, given the seriousness of the infringing”

This and other changes mitigate much of the “guilt on accusation” stance of the original Bill (and I do wonder whether many of the Twitterati realise this, given some of the incorrect and alarmist comments flying around), although it remains less than ideal.

Android includes infringing class libraries and documentation. Approximately one third of Android’s Application Programmer Interface (API) packages are derivative of Oracle America’s 19 copyrighted Java API packages and corresponding documents.

The infringed elements of Oracle America’s copyrighted work include Java method and class names, definitions, organization, and parameters; the structure, organization and content of Java class libraries; and the content and organization of Java’s documentation.

Examples of this copying are illustrated in Exhibit I to this complaint. In at least several instances, Android computer program code also was directly copied from copyrighted Oracle America code. For example, as may be readily seen in Exhibit J, the source code in Android’s “PolicyNodeImpl.java” class is nearly identical to “PolicyNodeImpl.java” in Oracle America’s Java, not just in name, but in the source code on a line-for-line basis.

Copyright claims are quite a different beast from patent infringement claims. Generally, copyright infringement requires there is (a) a copyright work; and (b) unauthorised copying of a substantial part of that work. While Oracle is alleging outright copying of code, it is the recent addition of more novel categories of “works” highlighted above that sparks interest.

The first question that arises is, does copyright subsist in “works” such as:

• Method and class names
• Parameters of methods
• The “structure, organisation and content” of class libraries
• The “content and organisation” of documentation.

These are quite different concepts from software code itself. Code is recognised as literary work for the purpose of copyright, and is protected as such. But what about related aspects and “concepts” such as the method names?

Copyright attaches to certain “original works” involving some independent intellectual effort. Clearly this will apply to the code comprising most human-authored non-trivial methods. The method could possibly be copyright as an individual work, or (more likely) as a part of a larger work (like a chapter in a novel). The name of the method may be included as part of the copyright work; to borrow the novel analogy again, in the same way as a chapter heading would probably be included as part of the novel’s copyright, albeit a very minor part.

An important distinction with a novel’s chapter headings, however, is that most method names are purely functional. In fact, good software design dictates that methods follow a logical and obvious naming convention. “Creativity” should be kept to a minimum (for the sanity of future developers!) For that reason, an individual method name is unlikely to attract copyright protection on its own, and would only constitute a very “thin” part of the overall work. Another developer, seeing the method name alone and copying it, would probably not have infringed copyright because the method name was not a substantial part of the copyright work.

The Oracle claims are not about copying just one or two method names, but rather about copying all (or most) of the Java methods, classes and parameters in order to replicate the Java API. If one method name is not copyrightable, what about all method names in an API? Compilations of works (or parts of works) are certainly copyrightable, but again there needs to be a minimum level of intellectual effort. And beside method names, does an entire API – consisting of method names, class names, return types, parameter names and types, access levels, namespaces and so on – have copyright protection?

How the US court answers this question could have important implications for developers.

In short, a customer had engaged an engineering firm to produce designs for an industrial machine. Unfortunately the terms of the engagement were unclear, and a dispute arose (some years later) between the customer and the engineering firm as to who actually owned the designs. The customer claimed that because it had commissioned those works, and provided an implied agreement to pay for them, and the designs were made pursuant to that commission, it (the customer) owned the copyright, by virtue of the commissioning rule. The engineering firm denied there had been a commissioning as defined in the Copyright Act, and that it therefore remained the owner of the designs.

The Court noted the orthodox position that:

Whether a work is “commissioned”; what the scope of that commission is; and the date on which the commission arises are all necessarily questions of fact in each case.

And it offered the following sage advice:

Patently, the better practice is to have a written agreement, and software developers and purchasers would be well advised to see that sound industry contracting procedures are put in place.

The critical issue was whether or not the customer had agreed to pay for the works – a requirement of the commissioning rule. Normally, payment (or an agreement to pay) is not in question, but was complicated in this case by the engineering firm claiming that it had provided a “free design service” in order to attract new customers. Because the designs had been provided for free, it claimed, the customer had not agreed to pay for the work and there could not have been a “commissioning” as defined in the Copyright Act.

The Court of Appeal rejected the engineering firm’s argument (which had been accepted in the High Court). It said that the engineering firm had offered “free design” on the basis that it would get to do the subsequent manufacturing work (which wasn’t free), and this was sufficient to create an intended-to-pay commissioning. The Court said it was “everyday commercial sense” that such an arrangement would be regarded as two parts of the same deal, and the customer had “agreed to pay” for the design work as part of the overall design-and-manufacture arrangement. It would be artificial to divide the “free design” and the subsequent intended manufacturing into two separate transactions. The Court therefore ruled that the copyright in the works was owned by the customer.

This is a useful case that demonstrates a pragmatic and commercially realistic substance-over-form approach to what was a murky factual situation. But, as the Court noted, these very costly disputes are easily avoidable by having a simple, appropriate agreement in place.

The New Zealand case is due to be heard in the High Court in May. The clear and forceful Australian judgments will surely be influential on the Court’s ruling (assuming the Telstra case is not overturned – it is being appealled), bearing in mind that New Zealand’s Copyright Act does have some important differences to Australia’s.

It is quite possible that by years end New Zealand will be on the road to adopting the more tightly focussed copyright law that has found favour in Australia. However, it will likley require at least one appeal to the Court of Appeal (and ideally another appeal to the Supreme Court) to set an authoritative precedent.

If this decision is upheld (it could yet be appealed to the Australian High Court, the nation’s highest court) it means that Australia has essentially adopted the position of the United States Supreme Court in Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service, which involved similar facts.

While the Feist case, and now the Telstra case, concerned telephone directories, the rulings cover compilations of facts generally. The rulings are clear: compilations of facts, without any “creative spark”, are not copyrightable regardless of the effort expended. There is now considerable disparity with the UK approach, which has tended to support the “sweat of the brow” approach rejected by Australia and the US.

The New Zealand courts have yet to conclusively determine this question, but the Australian High Court decision in IceTV and now the Telstra case will be persuasive. Australia’s copyright law is similar to New Zealand’s, and there is good reason to think that New Zealand will follow Australia’s lead in this area.

The New Zealand operator of the Yellow Pages (or simply “Yellow” on this side of the Tasman) is understandably unhappy about this. Likewise, the losing party in the Telstra case said:

“We are disappointed with the result; it is not appropriate to springboard off our time, energy, thought and effort.”

It is easy to sympathise with this view. However, the IceTV and Telstra cases are powerful restatements that, fundamentally, copyright is about originality not effort. Indeed, section 14 of the Copyright Act provides that copyright only exists in “original works”. If it’s not original (i.e. the product of independent intellectual effort), there is no copyright. In the Telstra case, the Federal Court came to this stark conclusion:

“None of the Works [i.e. the directories] were original. None of the people said to be authors of the Works exercised “independent intellectual effort” or “sufficient effort of a literary nature” in creating the Works. Further, if necessary, the creation of the Works did not involve some “creative spark” or the exercise of the requisite “skill and judgment”… For those reasons, I do not consider that copyright subsists in any of the [directories].”

In other words, the databases in question were simply collections of facts, and facts are (generally) not copyrightable.

This ruling (if upheld) opens the door in Australia for substantial third-party copying of databases for free. For content providers, the lesson is clear: copyright law can protect your originality, but not necessarily your effort.

• Article: Computerworld > Read up before you backup (3 December 2009)

Making a backup copy of software is expressly permitted under section 80 of the Copyright Act 1994. However, a backup copy can only be “used” if the original is lost or destroyed (or it can be used in lieu of the original copy). One of the issues the case clarified is that the occasional testing of a backup – which is of course sensible – does not breach that restriction.

However, if the purchaser was given an express direction that a backup cannot be made, then section 80 does not apply (i.e. a backup cannot be made). It is important to note that the direction not to make backups is only effective if given before or at the time the software was acquired. If the direction/prohibition was given in a click-through licence, but the software was “acquired” before that licence was accepted, section 80 will apply (i.e. a backup can be made). However, the licence agreement could still impose various other conditions about how the backup can be used/tested.

When the Copyright Act backup provisions were drafted, most backup scenarios would have involved physical media, not a failover system (hot/cold) backup. The court decision confirms that in the absence of any pre-purchase direction (which could be a simple notice on the package or on the website the software is downloaded from), a cold server backup can be made, and (subject to the licence terms) occasionally tested. A user could not, however, rely on section 80 to set up a hot server, as this would involve “use” of the copied software beyond the extent permitted.

It was good to see the court make a well-researched and practical judgment, following a hearing that involved a number of IT experts, including disaster recovery specialists. By the way, if this all sounds like much ado about not very much, it is worth noting the software in question was very expensive main-frame based software ($1m plus per licence) which, presumably, justified the cost of going to court. It is highly unlikely that Microsoft or Apple would have a major battle over a user making a simple backup of their software! Indeed, many software houses expressly permit it.

Read my full article here:

Computer program backups and the Copyright Act (Clendons Barristers & Solicitors)

The judgments:

Primary – Racing & Wagering Western Australia v Software AG (Australia) Pty Ltd [2008] FCA 1332
On appeal – Racing & Wagering Western Australia v Software AG (Australia) Pty Ltd [2008] FCA 1526

The proposed reformulation of s 92A of the Copyright Act, which gives the Copyright Tribunal the responsibility for deciding if users should have their internet access terminated, is a much improved proposal over the original. The key problem with the original, poorly drafted and poorly thought-out proposal was that it put the responsibility of whether or not to terminate, on the ISP. This would have been unfair to every ISP caught in the middle of a dispute between their customer and any number of third parties (who, in the case of international copyright holders, would most likely be legally represented).

The new proposal removes that responsibility from ISPs. It gives the responsibility to the Copyright Tribunal, which has (or will have) the necessary expertise and resources to deal with complaints. As a state agency, it is bound by the Bill of Rights Act 1990, which guarantees natural justice (s 27(1)). Its decisions are subject to judicial review (s 27(2)). The proposal to allow the Tribunal impose fines (quite different from “damages” that a Court could award) means that a person who is fined (even for a modest amount) could not be sued in Court for the same infringement (in addition the proposal is that the Tribunal have exclusive jurisdiction of s 92A matters) . Tribunal members are, to some extent at least, accountable to the democratically elected Government. It has statutory reporting obligations.

This not only solves the primary complaint about the original proposal, it should (subject to some changes – see below) also provide strong procedural safeguards for the web-surfing public.

So why is there still fuss about the new proposal?

A central complaint of the original proposal – the unfair burden it put on ISPs, and the real potential for “guilt by accusation” that followed – has now been resolved. The focus of critics has now shifted to the purportedly “disproportionate punishment” of terminating an internet account and the assault on “human rights” that entails.

The Creative Freedom Foundation’s position remains that termination is “disproportionate punishment“. Similarly, Keith Davidson of InternetNZ is reported as saying of the new proposal: “the termination of a household or business internet account is simply out of proportion to the alleged offence”.

How can termination be “out of proportion” to an offence that hasn’t happened yet? How can termination be “out of proportion” given the 3 stage, 3 month process, the first step of which requires notification and a right of reply and the right to mediation? How can termination be “out of proportion” when an ISP would be within its contractual rights to terminate a user’s account without notice for any number of reasons, which may or may not be less serious than copyright infringement?

The “human rights” line of argument also misses the point. Internet access through a particular ISP is not a human right. Every ISP in New Zealand provides their service subject to terms and conditions, including prohibiting copyright infringement. If you breach those terms and conditions (or your ISP believes you have), they may terminate your account. ISPs can impose whatever (lawful) terms and conditions they like. Most ISPs even reserve the right to change those terms and conditions at any time without your knowledge.

The revised proposal does not stop a terminated user from immediately signing up with another ISP. In fact it does not even stop a terminated user from opening a new account with the same ISP. It does not ban a person from the internet. The human rights argument falls flat.

Don’t get me wrong – there is a global war being fought by the major IP rights holders over the future of intellectual property and human rights are certainly one of the many factors at stake. The issue of software patents in this country (which should be banned) is one small battlefront in that war.

The difficulty, as I see it, is that some critics of s 92A (and critics of copyright/IP in general) only see the issue in terms of the big, wealthy, multinational companies suing mothers of young children for millions of dollars for sharing US$24 worth of music. Through my work as a lawyer, I have recently witnessed a situation where a semi-retired New Zealand man had spent many years painstakingly creating certain written works. For the past couple of years he had managed to make a reasonable amount of money selling these works to hobbyists in his particular field – not enough to live on, but enough to pay for his hobby and help him in his pending retirement. All that changed when one particular individual – lets call him Mr X – publicly (and illegally) republished all of those works online for free. Mr X admitted doing so, but refused to take the works down, claiming that in his view authors didn’t deserve copyright in these sorts of works, and they should be freely shared with everyone. Obviously, this was devastating to the New Zealand man. While in this particular situation Mr X’s website was hosted overseas, a s 92A-style notice-and-takedown procedure would have provided a reasonably efficient first-step remedy against this blatant theft and destruction of one man’s years of hard work and creative effort by someone ideologically opposed to the idea of copyright.

There is no doubt that heavy-handed, excessive enforcement has backfired and been a PR disaster for major rights holders. It is precisely that “overkill” that the ISP account termination approach seeks to alleviate, and that the revised s 92A proposal provides a reasonable balance against. Whether this is the “thin end of the wedge” remains to be seen – no doubt for some it is the first step in a larger strategy – but misrepresenting the current situation as a human rights issue is (at best) jumping at shadows.

The new proposal is obviously not yet complete. Whether or not the final proposal does turn out to be “fair, efficient and workable” as Policy Proposal Document promises remains to be seen. Some specific areas that need to be addressed are:

1. Protection against the making of frivolous, vexatious or bad-faith (e.g. abuse of process) complaints (this sort of protection is a good way of dealing with the false complaint issue).
2. Onus and standards of proof (the Policy Proposal Document talks about the balance of probability – which is usual for civil actions – but more detail on the types of permissible evidence will be important).
3. Clarification over who a “subscriber” is in a shared-access environment.
4. Requiring the Tribunal to take into account the rights of other users of the particular internet account in question.
5. Clarification over the status of non-ISP organisations caught by the Copyright Act’s very wide definition of “ISP” under the new proposal.
6. Clarification of jurisdiction (territorial limits, maximum fines, matters that may be taken into account, etc).

In a case that will possibly influence New Zealand law, the High Court of Australia (their highest court) last week handed down a major decision that makes it harder for companies to claim copyright over compilations and databases such as television schedule listings.

After a hearing involving no less than six QC’s (or Senior Counsels as they are now known in New Zealand and most Australian states), the High Court unanimously ruled in IceTV Pty Limited v Nine Network Australia Pty Limited that IceTV, which provides electronic programme guides, did not infringe the Nine Network’s copyright by partially reproducing its television schedule listings.

TV networks have long regarded their schedule listings as copyright material. In fact, it is common for networks to generate revenue by selling the rights to publish the listings in newspapers, magazines, etc, as seen here. As the network owns copyright in their TV listings, no one else is allowed to copy or display them without the network’s permission. There have been a number of cases on this issue over the years, and similar issues such as copying parts of telephone directories, with varying decisions (e.g. the well-known US Feist Publications case).

IceTV uses the time and tile information from the schedule listings of Australian TV networks (via publications such as the TV Guide) and combines them with its own research to produce its electronic programme guides. This seems innocuous enough – after all, why would the TV networks complain about a service that makes it easier for viewers to watch their television shows?

The first answer is that it is standard commercial practice for corporations to protect their intellectual property. The second and more cutting answer is: because the IceTV guides can be loaded into Personal Video Recorders which can be programmed to skip the advertisements. Some networks do provide “official” online schedules that can be used with PVRs, but these can only be used with “approved” devices which prevent ad-skipping, whereas IceTV’s schedules will work with “unofficial”, third-party devices that enable ad-skipping.

So Nine Network sought to prevent IceTV from using its TV listings by claiming that IceTV infringed copyright in those listings. If Nine Network was successful, then IceTV would have needed to obtain a licence from the network in order to incorporate the material into its personal guides, which (it was said) would effectively have shut down IceTV’s business.

It is important to note that Nine Network does own the copyright in its TV listings – that was conceded by IceTV, and it has long been recognised by the law that copyright does exist in such compilations of facts (in this case, the times and titles of upcoming TV shows). If IceTV copied Nine’s listing in their entirety – including the time, title, episode summary, rating, etc – then that would certainly breach copyright.

However, a key fact in the case was that IceTV did not copy Nine’s listings in their entirety. Instead they used only the title and time information to correct and fill in gaps in schedules that they largely produced themselves by watching TV and “reverse engineering” a basic schedule. Nine argued that this still amounted to the copying of a substantial part of their listings, and therefore infringed their copyright.

Under New Zealand and Australian copyright law, copyright is only infringed when a work is copied (or otherwise improperly dealt with) in its entirety or in “substantial part” – section 29 of the Copyright Act 1994. In other words, copying a “non-substantial” part of the work does not infringe copyright. Of course, the trick is determining what “substantial” means. As this case and others have shown, different judges can come to different conclusions on the same facts.

In the IceTV case, the central question was essentially whether the time and title information that was copied from Nine’s listings was a “substantial part” of the work (the listings as a whole).

The High Court said no, overturning the opposite finding of a full bench of the court below. The High Court cited the following principle:

“[T]he more simple or lacking in substantial originality the copyright work, the greater the degree of taking will be needed before the substantial part test is satisfied.”

While acknowledging that the programming schedule was developed through a creative process, the court found there was very little “originality” in the actual TV listings stating the titles and times of upcoming programs. The ideas behind the programming schedule may have been highly original, but the expression of the schedule in the form of the published TV listings was not – as the court said, there is very little choice in how to express a time and title for a TV show. Therefore, the originality of the TV listings was very low, and the amount of copying that would amount to a “substantial part” was high. On that basis, applying the principle stated above the court decided that the amount of copying by IceTV was not substantial and therefore did not infringe copyright.

Importantly, the court downplayed arguments relating to the need to protect Nine’s “investment of skill and labour” which had found favour in the court below. The High Court said that while the skill and labour that has gone into producing a work is still a relevant issue, that issue should not distract from the main inquiry, which is whether a substantial part of the actual work (and not the ideas behind the work) was copied.

A large part of the argument in the court below was whether or not IceTV had “misappropriated” Nine’s work. The court below found that it had, and this was a major reason for that court ruling that IceTV had infringed Nine’s copyright. The High Court disagreed with the relevance of this argument and noted:

“A finding that one party has “appropriated” skill and labour, of itself, is not determinative of the issue of infringement of a copyright work. The [Copyright Act] does not provide for any general doctrine of “misappropriation” and does not afford protection to skill and labour alone… [The] statutory requirement that the part of a work taken must be substantial assumes there may be some measure of legitimate appropriation of that investment.”

The court also engaged in a limited economic analysis that will be of great interest to those who believe that copyright law has become too restrictive in modern society:

“Rewarding skill and labour in respect of compilations without any real consideration of the productive effort directed to coming up with a particular form of expression of information can lead to error. The error is of a kind which might enable copyright law to be employed to achieve anti-competitive behaviour of a sort not contemplated by the balance struck in the [Copyright Act] between the rights of authors and the entitlements of the reading public.”

While the carefully worded and nuanced judgment is bound to be the subject of much debate, it does open the door for the increased legitimate (i.e. “fair dealing”) use of copyright material from compilations and databases such as TV listings, for personal and commercial purposes.

The World Digital Library has recently been launched. This is a UN-sponsored initiative to digitise historically significant books (mainly) as well as photographs and other content, and put them online for free public access. The library currently has 1200 exhibits, some dating back over 2000 years, and is expected to grow significantly as museums, galleries, universities and other institutions add content.

This raises a question: who owns the copyright in these historical works? Before you think “who cares – the authors have been dead for centuries”, think again.

In the digital age, content is distinct from format. This turns our one question into two. The first is: who owns the copyright in the content (e.g. the actual words) of a historical book? In most cases it will be the author (long deceased).

Many countries grant copyright in literary works for a term of the life of the author plus x years. In New Zealand (and much of the world) it is the life of the author plus 50 years (more or less). This means that if an author wrote one book in 1920, another in 1930, and died in 1960, both books would be in copyright until 2010. In other words, until 2010 rolls around, only the copyright owner (which may be the author while he/she is alive, or the publisher, or the author’s estate) has the right to copy and print book.

For most of the books in the World Digital Library, this question is rather academic, as most of the works are centuries old. Therefore, like Shakespeare’s plays, anyone is free to copy, reprint and make any other use of the content of these ancient works. Which is fair enough.

The second, more interesting question is: who owns the copyright in the digital scan (i.e. the representation) of these online historical works? Somewhat surprisingly, given that we are in the digital age, this is not necessarily easy to establish.

The basic legal principle of copyright is that copyright only arises in original works. In New Zealand, section 14 of the Copyright Act 1994 states:

14 (1) Copyright is a property right that exists, in accordance with this Act, in original works …

14 (2) A work is not original if … it is, or to the extent that it is, a copy of another work …

Therefore, to the extent that a digital scan of an existing book is a copy of that book, there will be no new copyright in the scan. However, if the scan involved some “originality”, such as adjusting colour balances, improving the image, or adding some “artistic expression”, then the scan may attract copyright.

The same situation arises when taking a photograph of a famous landmark (say the famous Cathedral Cove). If thousands of people take basically the exact same photograph of the exact same landmark, how can any one photographer own copyright in their particular image? [Admittedly those photos are fairly different.] The answer is that, in virtually all cases, no two photographs will ever be exactly the same – there will always be at least minor differences in light, colour, angle, perspective, etc – and the photographer will always have to go to some effort to take a photo at any given time. This is sufficient for each photographer’s photo to be an “original work” under copyright law.

When it comes to high-resolution scanning, however, it is questionable whether there is anything original added. In fact, the whole point of the scanning may be to produce the closest possible copy to the original. The law sets a low bar for finding original content, but if there is no original content in a digital scan, then there will not be copyright in the scan. [There is a lot more to this issue, as discussed in the leading case Land Transport Safety Authority of NZ v Glogau [1999] 1 NZLR 261 (not freely online but cited here at paragraph 139).]

A local example of digital scans of historical works is Auckland City’s great Heritage Images Online collection. Many of these images were taken in the early 1900’s by Henry Winklemann, who died in 1931. Therefore, the images themselves are well out of copyright. However, the scans of the photos on the Heritage Images website may well be copyright.

So to summarise who owns copyright in historical works:

1. If the author of the work died more than 50 years ago, it is a fairly safe bet that the content of the work is out of copyright (* see below).
2. If the historical work has been scanned, the scan may be subject to copyright, and you will need to make your own enquiries and assessment as to whether you can copy the scanned work.

Both the World Digital Library and Auckland City take this self-responsibility approach.

The World Digital Library site says:

“When publishing or otherwise distributing materials found in a WDL partner’s collections, the researcher has the obligation to determine and satisfy domestic and international copyright law or other use restrictions.”

Auckland City’s Heritage Images Online site says:

“Responsibility for obtaining the permission of the copyright owner rests with the applicant… The applicant will be required to produce written authorisation from the copyright owner, or where the details of copyright are unknown the applicant must make a declaration in writing accepting full responsibility for any claims which may arise from such reproduction, and indemnify the Library of any responsibility”

In other words, you are responsible for making your own enquiries about the copyright of any particular work.

* Note about duration of copyright. The “life of author plus 50 years” duration refers to New Zealand law. In the US, the duration of copyright has been progressively extended, most recently in 1998 by the Copyright Term Extension Act. This law extended the term for copyright for works published prior to 1978 to 95 years. The apparent reason? Under the previous law, Mickey Mouse and other still-valuable corporate intellectual property was due to come out of copyright in the year 2000. Therefore, in 1998, after extensive lobbying, Congress extended Mickey & friends’ term for another 20 years.