Good News: California Legislature Dumps Stupid Plan To Copyright All Government Works

from the close-one dept

Back in April, we noted that California Assemblymember Mark Stone was pushing some legislation to basically push California governments to copyright and trademark everything they could. This was a bad kneejerk response to the admittedly ridiculous situation in Yosemite, where the concessions vendor had trademarked various park names and then tried to hold them ransom. Of course, the proper response is to make sure that kind of thing can't be covered by trademark or copyright law, not push state government entities to lock up things under intellectual property laws.

Despite widespread criticism, the plan moved forward with only modest tweaks earlier this month. Thankfully, with the help of EFF pushing lots of people to speak out against the bill, it appears that the California legislature has basically dropped the proposal entirely. The amended bill looks very, very different. See all that red text? That's what's been removed: That's basically all the bad stuff. What remains is basically a requirement that state agencies "consider" the intellectual property rights at issue when they're writing contracts -- which as EFF notes -- should more effectively deal with Yosemite-like situations, without the massive overkill of giving California government agencies copyrights and trademarks in everything.

Filed Under: ab 2880, california, copyright, mark stone, trademark, yosemite