Christian Zimmermann had spent a busy Christmas finding material for us. In a breathtaking extension of copyright from 70 to 3000 years, Egypt is copyrighting the pyramid. Sounds like a hoax, but apparently not. Why U.S. companies think that they are going to live by the sword has never been obvious to me - the U.S. is johnny-come-lately to the invention business. Suppose England decides to retroactively extend patents to cover the industrial revolution, and demands license fees on every invention that has used an idea from that period? Or the Saudis retroactively copyright the arabic numerals?

On this cheerful note, an oldie but goodie, also from Christian, the Johnson and Johnson lawsuit against the Red Cross - for using the Red Cross...

At the very least we should boycott Johnson & Johnson. I'm sure there are competing products for their whole line, such as bandaids.

It sounds to me like J&J is in the right. The Red Cross was limited to use of the symbol only for Non-Commercial use, and that was the agreement the two groups had. What Red Cross SHOULD do, if they want to sell medical supplies under the Red Cross symbol, they SHOULD be co-branding them and manufacturing/selling them with J&J, instead of FOUR other companies who have no right to use the symbol.

As for the Pyramid thing, about the only way someone could infring upon the copyright would be to manufacture an EXACT REPLICA of the pyramids, which I don't think exist anywhere on earth (note the article says: ""The new law will completely prohibit the duplication of historic Egyptian monuments which the Supreme Council of Antiquities considers 100-percent copies"" (emphasis added) and also that "the law "does not forbid local or international artists from profiting from drawings and other reproductions of pharaonic and Egyptian monuments from all eras -- as long as they don't make exact copies."").

And now the Sistine Chapel

J&J might be right under trademark law or whatever law applies, but in a free market there would be no such thing as trademark as it is currently understood. (Trademark was introduced in the U.S. under the Copyright Act of 1870, which believe it or not, also introduced design patents.)

You say they have no right to use the symbol in question, but I maintain they do because no one owns it, conceived as an idea or an expression. What a company does own is its tangible property--a sign, box, or other contraption bearing a red cross, for example. If the Red Cross wants to create a sign with a red cross and use it as a marketing tool, as long as they do so with their own property (not stolen property), they should be able to do so.

You and I have the same right, or at least we would in a free market.

While I agree that Trademarks, Patents, and Copyrights have gone way beyond their true, reasonable use, there is still at least a good reason to have them. In the case of Trademarks, they are useful in preventing companies from tricking unintelligent customers from being deceived by companies pretending to be other companies, or companies making cheap, unsafe knock-offs and calling them the real thing (not to say it doesn't happen, but it wouldn't be illegal if we didn't have Trademarks).

In this case, J&J has the trademark to use the red cross for medical supplies. BUT, they should NOT have ever been allowed to get the trademark in the first place, since it was used BEFORE they registered it to denote medical services/personnel on the battlfield so they wouldn't get killed. In addition, something as simple as a basic image shouldn't be allowed as a trademark on its own, but the cross PLUS the J&J name should be allowed to be trademarked for the above mentioned reasons.

I agree that trademarks are generally a good thing: DeveloperZero's post summarizes my own reaction to the red cross case.

I am all for trademarks, but without the monopoly conferred by the trademark law. So, for example, Johnson & Johnson can use a red cross (not "the" red cross) with its name to market its products, and so can the Red Cross--or any other outfit.

Trademark law might accomplish what you say it does against knockoffs, but in a free market, trademark law wouldn't exist, so consumers who thought they were defrauded by purveyors of knockoffs could sue them for fraud. Of course, many consumers are happy with knockoffs, so good for them.

What about a company that produced a product that was copied by a knockoff purveyor? They couldn't sue in a free market. Why? First, they don't own their trademark, reputation, or other "intellectual property." They do own the physical copies of their products (inventory), fixtures, etc., but they don't own other companies' knockoffs of their products. Second, they can advertise and warn people of knockoffs, who the sellers are, etc. Third, they have the option of buying up the products produced by competitors making knockoffs, or paying them to go out of business and stop producting them. Fourth, at least in some cases they can make their products in such a way that they are difficult or even impossible to copy. The U.S. government will soon start producing paper currency (bernankes?) that have something embedded that makes them more difficult to counterfeit (maybe I should say recounterfeit). Whether this will work or not I don't know.

To drive this point home, consider the hypothetical case of Smith, a famous actor, and Jones, a Smith lookalike and imitator, who tries to pass himself off as Smith, even by using Smith's name and other images. Let's say he succeeds and the real Smith loses some acting jobs as a result. Can he sue Jones-cum-Smith for unlawful imitation? Certainly not, or at least not successfully. If the imitator has defrauded anyone, it's the audience (or some in the audience) who think they really are seeing the real Smith, not the pale imitator. He's not defrauding the real Smith, because the real Smith doesn't own his likeness or reputation. So maybe someone in the audience can sue for fraud, but Smith can't. The same principle applies with trademark law and knockoffs.

As for protecting stupid people, I am against the compulsory paternalism that calls in Big Brother, even if done in an ostensibly good cause--to protect people from their own stupidity. The Darwinian consequences of stupidity can be a good thing.