"Copyright for Egypt" Topic

Spotted on my favourite IP and Copyright Lawyer website:

"Egypt has plans to copyright pyramids, the Sphinx, and other well-known landmarks, such as the mask of Tutankhamun, and use the money from the royalties from copies of these monuments to pay for their upkeep and maintenance.

If the proposed law is introduced, then manufacturers and retailers will need to obtain special permission and even pay fees to Egypt to sell products relating to well known landmarks.

Some 120 antiquities would be protected under the new law, Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, stated."

Now… if this goes through, this 'could' affect model makers producing scale models of the Pyramids themselves… although I would guess that a generic pyramid is probably old enough to fall outside of copyright :-D

Thats going to cost these guys money

despair.com/achievement.html

Yes it is. I think they are precisely the target. Apparently the Las Vegas hotel doesn't count, as it's not an exact copy.

This is what they have to say about it on the National Geographic website:

link

Don't you have to be the actual creator of something to be able to copyright it? I believe the pyramid builders are all mostly dead by now?

Also, those monument designs are so entrenched in the public domain that Egypt can pass all the laws it wants to but they shouldn't expect to start rolling in the royalties.

Well thats the point, they can make any laws they want.

A couple of them will be back if they can ever get their hands on the Necronomicon…

Good marketing idea, but it should not be allowed to pass ANY sort of legal test, as the claim has no merit. However, all you need is one corrupt or idiotic official in the US to agree with it in a copyright treaty and then it'll be the law.

Honestly, the whole thing stinks.

I didn't know one official in the US could make a treaty. I thought it required by a body of corrupt and idiotic officials.

But Murphy, don't let your paranoia about Billary blind you. When the unamericans elect Hussayn Osama to be president, it'll be no time at all before we're kowtowing to whatever the fundamentalist Musselman caliphates like Egypt want us to do.

Allen (wondering how many the sarcasm will elude)

'The law holds that no exact-scale replica can be made: For instance, if an object is two inches (five centimeters) tall, a product of the same dimensions cannot be made without permission. But a three-inch (six-centimeter) replica would be acceptable, Hawass said.'

I don't think model makers will need to worry all that much!