Originally Posted By: MarioD
Since he and his partner has copyrighted every existing melody can they be sued by the original copyright owners? If so I hope they have a ton of money.


That's an interesting slant Mario, but what would the original copyright holder GET from the suit? The reason those kind of suits come to pass are that the original composer wants a share of the proceeds generated by the stolen intellectual property. In this case all they did was copyright them and place them into public domain, which essentially says "We own these but you are free to use them."

I frankly don't know how "copyright" and "public domain" go into the same sentence. By definition public domain means "free for anyone to use for any reason, including for business or commercial reasons".

This is slightly similar to domain squatting. Similar (using myself as an example) because I have a domain I own but don't use. Dissimilar in that if somebody wants that domain they have to buy it from me. These guys own all those melodies but are saying anybody can use them for free.

So if I write a song today, if they truly made every combination of 12 notes possible, do I have to list them on a CD if I publish? Doesn't this put the copyright Office out of business? From the other angle, can't I use them for the melodies of the 40-45 songs I currently have copyrighted? I could probably sue, but they didn't record them and are not making money from my melody, so what do I sue for?

Really an interesting topic that creates more questions than it answers..