Rick Baudé Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> At the risk of playing "devils advocate" a role I
> hate. Hawass and Egypt might be within his
> rights. Not only that but the Egyptians could file
> "design patents" on any and all monuments (just
> like coca cola has a design patent on their
> bottle. And McDonald's has or had a patent on
> their french fry box, and Col. Sanders had a
> patent on the recipe for his Kentucky Fried
> Chicken.
Which they all
personally created. Neither Hawass nor the modern Egyptians can copyright, patent or trademark the ancient monuments, of which they personally did not create. Period. Read your law on this subject.
Such law requires the
actual creators to file the patents, trademarks, and copyrights. No matter how much Hawass may go on about this, the statute of limitations for filing such copyrights and/or patents of these designs has long since expired - as have the creators of the monuments.
As I noted in
my earlier post in this thread, even designs which have equal inspiration across cultures cannot be copyrighted by any one culture. Further, by now even the design of the pyramid shape has also fallen into public domain in architectural terms.
Katherine Griffis-Greenberg
Doctoral Candidate
Oriental Institute
Doctoral Programme in Oriental Studies [Egyptology]
Oxford University
Oxford, United Kingdom