Re: "Commodore" brand

Don't confuse copyrights with trademarks or with patents.

Trademarks are things like the brand logo and certain slogans.
Copyrights are for things like the Kernal rom, BASIC rom, the cartridges, software applications, utilities, video games, etc. that were on cassette or disk or any medium for that matter.

Patents are for inventions. Example: The 6502 or the Blitter in the Amiga and other such things could be deemed patentable inventions. Patents for Commodore technologies including the Amiga had expired in the U.S. It is only up to 20 years and not renewable. 

Yeah, you can make a C64 clone or an Amiga clone (hardware wise). However, you run into problems with firmware and software because of copyrights. You might run into problems trademark wise if you use the Commodore brand and what not. In which case, you would need those rights.

The question at hand is who owns the trademarks. Cloanto has copyrights or a license for the copyrights. I can't recall clearly which. This doesn't mean they can use the Commodore trademark without a license to use the trademark from the owner of the Commodore trademarks. They could acquire the trademark. Note: There is a legal difference between having a license to intellectual property rights and owning it.

> On February 24, 2020 10:46 AM William Levak <wlevak_at_sdf.org> wrote:
> 
>  
> On Mon, 24 Feb 2020, geneb wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, 24 Feb 2020, smf wrote:
> >
> >> On 21/02/2020 15:16, groepaz_at_gmx.net wrote:
> >>>> register?
> >>> are you confused? cloanto is claiming the copyright, which was what we 
> >>> were
> >>> talking about.
> >> 
> >> No, it appears you are confused. You don't need to register a copyright.
> >> 
> >
> > In the US, the act of creating a work automatically bestows copyright. 
> > However, if you want to be able to sue for infringement, it needs to be 
> > registered. (https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html)
> 
> This was a revision in the US copyright law (I don't remember when). 
> Originally, you had to register to get a copyright.  Also when the first 
> Commodore computers and other PC's came out, The courts could not produce 
> a consistant ruling on whether or not computer programs could be 
> copyrighted.  It took a revision of the copyright laws to specifically 
> include computer programs.  The artwork that produced IC masks was always 
> copyrightable.
> 
> wlevak_at_sdf.org
> SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.org