Siliconvalley.com reports about a trial in Japan where Paramount wanted to stop a Japanese company to re-release classic movies originally released before 1953. Now the trick is that the 50-year patents of Paramount to these tiles (like Casablanca or Citizen Kane) expired in 2003, putting them into the public domain. “A 2004 law extended copyright protection for films by 20 years. Judge Makiko Takabe rejected Paramount’s claims that its products that had entered the public domain are retroactively subject to patent protection for 20 more years under the new law.”

Nice try.