Complete the American Film Institute Top 10 of Top 10

• How many films in total have you seen at least once?

• Count up the number of films you have seen at least once\
• Count up the number of films you have seen 2 or more times
• Have you ever visited a Disney theme park or vacation resort?
• What did you like about those experiences?

Intellectual property = "the legally recognized exclusive rights to creations of the mind. Under intellectual property law, owners are granted certain exclusive rights to a variety of intangible assets, such as musical, literary, and artistic works; discoveries and inventions; and words, phrases, symbols, and designs." {W}

• vs. Real property: non-movable assets, i.e., buildings & grounds

• vs. Personal property: tangible/movable assets (e.g., jewelry, clothing) and intangible assets (e.g., bank accounts, stocks)

Legal rights associated with intellectual property are grounded in US Constitution, Art. 1, Sec. 8, Clause 8.

• Trademarks and service marks: A trademark (for goods, "TM") or a service mark (for services, "SM") is any word, phrase, symbol, design, or combination of these things that identifies a company’s goods or services. Such marks are valid for as long as the trademark is used or the US Patent & Trademark Office rules that the term has become generic, that is, it has become part of everyday language. For example, in the US, all of the following terms used to trademarked by corporations but are now used generically: cellophane, aspirin, escalator, laundromat, linoleum, thermos, trampoline.
  
  
• Trademarks can include Logos, Phrases, Sounds, Scents, Shapes & Colors, the overall appearance & image of a product, and fictional characters
  

• Famous Trademarks described

• Patents. A patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the inventor, issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. This property right allows its owner to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, selling or importing the invention. Generally, the term of a new patent is 20 years from the date on which the application for the patent was filed in the United States. There are three types of patents
  
  
• 1) Utility patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof;
  
  
• 2) Design patents may be granted to anyone who invents a new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture; and
  
  
• 3) Plant patents may be granted to anyone who invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plant.
  
  
• Examples of important patents in the last century:
  
  
• 1. Edison’s Light Bulb Patent [1880] (one of 1,100 patents by Edison & his lab)
• 2. Wright Brothers’ Airplane Patent [1903]
  
• 3. Fleming’s Penicillin [discovered 1928] • technique for mass production patented 1945
• 4. Steve Jobs’ iPhone Design Patent [2012)]
• 5. Marconi’s Wireless Telegraphy Patent [1901, plus another ~800 patents by him/his company]
• 6. Notable Pharmaceutical Patents
• Aspirin by Bayer [1900-1917]
• Viagra by Pfizer (Sildenafil, 1996)
• Prozac (fluoxetine) by Eli Lilly & Co. [1977]
• Lipitor by Pfizer [1997-2011; created $100 billion in sales]
• Insulin [1921]. Sold by discoverers to U Toronto for $1 to make it available worldwide.
• 7. Google’s PageRank Algorithm Patent [1998-2018]
  

• Copyright: Copyright is a type of intellectual property that protects original works of authorship as soon as an author fixes the work in a tangible form of expression. In copyright law, there are a lot of different types of works, including paintings, photographs, illustrations, musical compositions, sound recordings, computer programs, books, poems, blog posts, movies, architectural works, plays, and so much more!" (U.S. Copyright Office). When this intellectual property is no longer under copyright, it falls into the "public domain" and can be used by anyone.
  
  "The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds the exclusive rights, anyone can legally use or reference those works without permission" [Wikipedia, 20230411]
  

CGP Grey: Copyright - Forever Less One Day (YouTube; 5m12s)

 Legal Length of Copyright

• 1790: 28 years
• 1831: 42 years
• 1909: 56 years (with © affixed to publication)
• 1976: 75 years or 50 years after author's death

• 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (colloquially "Mickey Mouse Protection Act")
• Personal author: 70 years after author's death
• Corporate author: 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication
• Applies to anything published after 1923
• © doesn't need to be affixed to publication

Historical

• Hollywood: Rise of the great studios (Warner Bros., MGM, etc.) including film production, distribution, and theater ownership (vertical integration)

• The Hearst Corporation in the 1920s & 1930s: magazines & newspapers + Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) film company

• 1st commercial radio station: Pittsburgh, PA: KDKA began broadcasting in November, 1920

• NBC (National  Broadcasting Company, originally RCA [Radio Corporation of America founded 1926]
  
• CBS [Columbia Broadcasting System founded in 1927]
• Mutual Broadcasting System founded in 1934 (did not become a television network)
• American Broadcasting Company [ABC founded in 1943]

• Consequences of the emergence of such companies

1. Appearance of the corporate than than individual author

2. Legally protected intellectual property owned by corporate authors becomes the foundation of an almost endless series of republication opportunities as new technologies provide new outlets

3. The value of media corporations resides in protecting the ownership of their creations. If they cannot be protected against use by others, the corporation value decreases.

Modern Corporate Media Conglomerates

   Control of the content of more than half of modern mass media resides in five companies

• Comcast Corporation (Comcast Cable-Xfinity, NBCUniversal, Telemundo TV, Universal Theme parks, Sky TV in Europe) • 2022/2023 revenue: $116.4 B/$121.6 B; profit $14.2 B/$16.5 B
  

• The Walt Disney Company • 2022/2023 revenue: $82.2 B/$88.9 B; profit $12.1 B/$12.9 B (2017 revenue: $55.1 B; profit $8.98 B; 2020 revenue: $65.4 B; profit $8.1 B)

• Charter Communications/Spectrum (formerly Time Warner • 2022/2023 revenue: $54.0 B/$54.6 B; profit: $5.1 B/$4.6 B  (2017 revenue: $31.3 B; profit $3.83 B)

• Netflix • 2022/2023 revenue: $30.4 B/$33.7 B; Profit $5.0/$5.4 B; 283.3 million subscribers in 2023
  

• Paramount Global   (formerly ViacomCBS &, earlier, Viacom) • 2022 revenue; $30.2B; profit $1.1B (2017 revenue: 12.5 B; profit $1.4 B)

• In the contemporary world of media, a major element in the success of media corporations resides in their ownership of an online streaming platform
  

The Walt Disney Company

What does Disney own in 2024?  (partial listing)