FAQ updates

Soon I'll be starting a series of explanations on issues related to the Siegel ruling and intellectual property. As I noted in the earlier FAQ, if you have any questions, please don't hesitate the email them to me or to post them as a comment. Chances are a number of other people are wondering the same thing.

In the course of my subsequent posts, I'll also take time to tell a bit of the history behind the current controversy as well explain how creators and companies are dealing with these issues today. It's a fascinating area with lots of interesting connections.

For example, one question this morning offered a reminder that the story is not always David and Goliath. The issue: whether the Siegel case was related at all to the Abend ruling, which concerned the movie version of Rear Window based on an original short story. More about that soon enough--gotta run--but one thing worth noting is that the Abend case also involved a deceased creator and his estate . . . except in the that case, the beneficiary was a trust sending the cash to Columbia University.

Who should be able to benefit from a late creator's work? It's a highly contested issue that we'll be exploring throughout this week.