At what point are copyright laws damning to entrepreneurship?

Think about it: it seems that almost every company that holds the copyright to a name/image/what-have-you is willing to fight for its right to be the sole operation who uses it. And these days they're not just asserting their right to use a name or image as a whole, but every aspect of it. In some cases, it's gotten to the point of ridiculous.

A few years ago eBay threatened legal action against the owners of the URL gotodepoebay.com because—you guessed it—"eBay" is in the URL. As it turns out, the owner of the site was a realtor in the town of Depoe Bay, Oregon. That still didn't stop eBay. Other notable instances of major corporations questionably flexing their copyright muscle include Starbucks going after a women's roller derby league in Seattle for using what they perceived to be certain aspects of their logo. Most recently the makers of the Facebook game Scrabulous were taken on by Hasbro, who owns the rights to the board game Scrabble.

But there's a fine line between protecting intellectual property and policing creativity. Let's face it, there are only so many ways you can draw a circle, and if you use a ring in your logo, does that mean that Starbucks has the right to sue you for trademark infringement? And if that's true, doesn't that seem inhibiting to entrepreneurship?

We're going to go out on a limb here, but it seems like copyright law might now reach farther than originally intended. While sure everyone wants to have their ideas protected—and it's fair to a point—the real issue is public domain. At what point is it more beneficial to have that drug, song, or game available to the public?

Original American copyright law extends the rights and securities to authors and inventors, and sought to create an ownership of an idea for up to 25 years, after which (or upon the creator's death), it passed into public domain. It's since been revised to extend up to 70 years with the Sonny Bono act (no, we didn't make that up). So to the makers of Scrabulous: we'll look forward to seeing more from you in the year 2063. That is, if the laws aren't extended again.