Inspired by [this post](https://old.reddit.com/r/crtgaming/comments/fvp6tm/time_to_try_this_new_animal_crossing_thing/); is it that some features got licensed/registered before others?
In: Other
We say that you own a copyright on a singular thing. For example, we say that JK Rowling owns the copyright on “Harry Potter”. But that’s really an oversimplification of how the system works to make it comprehensible for normal people. The reality is that its not the work itself that is copyrighted, but rather the creative elements of that work. So for example, what is copyrighted in Animal Crossing are the visual designs of the characters and maybe some of the dialogue.
But the individual elements in a video game change because video games are constantly being patched and updated. So if the game was released in 2001 then the game’s base content is copyrighted in that year. But if there is a patch in 2002 that adds new copyrightable elements – say a new character is introduced – then that new content has a copyright date of 2002.
You also sometimes see this in books that have multiple editions. For example, lets say that you buy the 8th edition of a text book, which came out in 2020. The vast majority of the book’s content will have come from previous editions. Only the content that is new to the 8th edition has a copyright date of 2020.
Lets say that this is a very old medical textbook where the first edition came out in 1890 – it may be that a substantial amount of the content in the 8th edition has been in the book since that first edition and so has a copyright date of 1890. If that was the case, it may be that a lot of that book is actually in the public domain, and only the small amount of new stuff that has been added in more recent editions is still under copyright.
However, publishers of frequently-updated works, such as software, apparently desire to convey the idea that different versions of their works appear over time, and each is subject to copyright protection. So they provide a copyright notice with multiple years, the first year being the year of first publication.
Such a notice is not a problem. Even though multiple years are not expressly permitted, the three required elements are present, albeit with some extraneous information.
https://danashultz.com/2013/10/09/copyright-notice-with-multiple-years-legitimate/
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