Comment by eru

Journalism is at least as much about providing entertainment as about 'problems'. And as far as entertainment goes, producing this article was a lot less effort than eg staging the Olympics.

Btw, generically talking about IP misses important distinctions here: this is an article about trademarks, not about copyright.

To give another example Brooks Brothers is a company founded in 1818, and I presume they still have their trademark. The trademark is not there to protect some creative achievement anyone had in 1818, but to help consumers not confuse the real Brooks Brothers with other people who make apparel.

(Whether you buy that justification or not is a different question. I'm just pointing out that trademark and copyright are two different beasts.

Another distinction: if you sit in your shed isolated from the outside world, and you produce a product to sell, generally whatever comes out of that process can't violate copyright---even if you produce exactly the same thing as an existing product)---but it can violate trademarks and patents. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean-room_design

In much of the modern world copyright is granted automatically, but trademarks have to be registered and defended.)

I am very skeptical of the very idea patents, and somewhat skeptical of copyright, especially long terms. But trademarks are an entirely separate category, with entirely different trade-offs on a societal level. There are things to be skeptical about but indefinitely renewable terms ain't one of them.