Life plus 70: trademarks will not extend copyright duration

While trademark law sometimes overlaps copyright law in the grey area
surrounding creative works (in particular those that have reverted to the public
domain), Jeanne Hamburg, special counsel with Baker Botts LLP in New York, explains
that a decision from the US Supreme Court and another from the US Federal Court
of Appeals show that, ultimately, trademark protection cannot always be assumed
to apply when copyright does not. This is in good part due to the concern that
applying unlimited rather than limited rights would violate the US Constitution.