On Tue, 24 Feb 2004, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> The problem is that one can never trust a company.
Companies regularly go
> on their words if it's profitable for them. Also, companies can go bust and
> their property sold off to to cover debts.
Bankruptcies can have an uncertain effect on
copyrights. When the
assets are liquidated the company's copyrights may be completely
ignored, or not noticed at all. They are not distributed or sold as
assets. My contention would be that when the bankruptcy is discharged
without a distribution of copyrights, that would put the copyrights into
the public domain. Copyright is a property right. Can a property right
exist in the absence of someone to own it?
For a software company, I don't think copyrights will be ignored. And it's
wishful thinking to believe the copyrights of a bankrupt software company
vanish in a puff og logic.
Also, a company can be subject to hostile takeovers (for instance if a majority
of stockholders in my company go personally bankrupt).
We should plan for the worst case scenario.
(Which is why at my company the individual programmer always keeps copyright,
while the company gets to use the software under the GPL.)
-- Daniel