Re:Mondrian Entered the Public Domain. The Estate Disagrees
by brookst on Tuesday March 03, 2026 @09:40AM
(#47233067)
Trademarks are IP; I thought we were taking about a generalized IP tax.
But, ok, copyright.
Who exactly is going to do these audits, find comparable works, etc? For every single copyright (500,000-ish registered in the US per year, far more unregistered but real copyrights)?
And you’d need to audit all existing copyrights… that song may have produced very little revenue, but then a big artist covers it, and the composition rights (but not performance rights) are suddenly worth a lot more.
It all seems like an exercise in applying engineering to law, which never goes well.
For a copyrighted work, you would examine the work, find similar works, what were the stream of payments for similar works. Take into account age of the work, the artist's other works, etc.
McDonald's does hold copyright in many things. But many of those are unlikely to produce significant income; training videos, promotional materials, etc don't tend to sell for much if at all.
If you needed to appraise a new song by a popular artist, you could do a reasonable job by looking at the stream of payments generated by their average song, and projecting future payments based on the general trends of payments for songs over time. You might also consider current popularity of the artist/song and how that impacts longevity; songs don't acheive many sales initially often hit zero sales and never come back, whereas songs that chart tend to have continued, if meager, sales for a long time.