Copyrights and patents are supposed to be a bargain: a limited reward for creating, after which the work belongs to all of us. That bargain got stretched into near-permanent monopolies. This statute restores it — real but limited terms, a guaranteed public domain, no evergreening, no patent trolls, and facts and ideas that no one can own.
Copyright terms were stretched again and again, often retroactively, keeping works locked up for generations and shrinking the public domain to almost nothing.Check it
Drug and tech patents were "evergreened" — a trivial tweak used to extend a monopoly long past the real invention's life.Check it
Patent trolls who invented nothing bought up claims to extract payment from people who actually build things.Check it
And the line between protecting expression and owning facts, ideas, and methods kept blurring in favor of the holder.Check it
Copyright runs life-plus-fifty years (seventy for corporate works), then the work enters the public domain permanently. Terms can be shortened easily, lengthened only rarely — and never retroactively.
Patents run twenty years, then the invention belongs to everyone. No evergreening: a trivial tweak can't extend the monopoly.
Whoever didn't create it and doesn't use it can't wield the right just to extract payment from those who do. Courts deny troll enforcement and can award costs.
A copyright protects the particular expression only — never the facts, ideas, methods, or information, which stay free for all.
Terms were repeatedly extended, sometimes pulling works back out of the public domain, so almost nothing became free in a lifetime.Check it
Life-plus-fifty (seventy for corporate/anonymous works), then permanent public domain. These are maximums — shortenable by ordinary law, lengthenable only by supermajority and never retroactively. Nothing in the public domain can be pulled back out.
A minor reformulation or new use could stretch a twenty-year monopoly into something far longer, especially on medicines.Check it
Twenty years from filing, then the public domain. Only genuine, novel, non-obvious inventions qualify — not laws of nature, abstract ideas, or the basic building blocks of knowledge. An insubstantial tweak can't extend the term, in any field, medicines included.
Non-practicing entities amassed vague or overlapping claims to wall off whole fields and shake down real creators.Check it
Someone who neither created nor uses an invention can't wield the right principally to extract payment. Courts deny such enforcement and may award costs and fees. Stockpiling trivial, overlapping claims to wall off a field is prohibited and unenforceable to the extent of the abuse.
Criticism, teaching, research, and parody were increasingly chilled by aggressive claims, and facts themselves were treated as ownable.Check it
The public keeps the right to use protected works for criticism, comment, news, teaching, scholarship, research, and parody. Facts, ideas, methods, and information can never be owned — they remain free for everyone.
This is the plain-language version. The binding text is CS-32, which implements Article Three, Section 7 of the Constitution.
This is your country’s law. Help shape the next draft of it.
