It’s always been curios to me that the author or inventor or artist doesn’t own the rights to their work for all time. Why do these things expire?
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It creates a balance to make any piece of IP as useful to society as possible. Without having some sort of protection in place, no one would have any incentive to invent anything because it would be stolen and sold for cheaper by someone else who didn’t have to put the money into research and development. If it could be protected forever, no one else could ever make any sort of improvement to it to advance the technology into the future. We would have to count on the inventor themselves to make it better, but they wouldn’t necessarily even have to because they have a monopoly on the existing one.
As for art and similar works, it’s also important that people have a level of control over their creations. They should also get to benefit from their work without it being stolen. But simultaneously, after a certain amount of time, that IP basically becomes a part of the public lexicon. It would be weird if someone could’ve copyrighted Santa or something and then no one is ever able to use that character again. I think it just makes sense that something eventually becomes so ingrained in the fabric of society that we should all have access to it. And hopefully the creator was able to get the bulk of the monetary value out of it during that restrictive window when it was still protected.
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