I see this when my computer boots up XP. Why does it say this? Did the copyright expire in 2001? I didn’t know copyrights expire…What’s with the range of years instead of just one?
I always assumed it was because different components had different copyright dates. So for example the version of Notepad in the installation may be substantially unchanged form the 1985 verison, MSPaint might be the 1990 version while Internet Explorer will have been drastically modified in 2001 and so forth. Hence the entire package has a copyright date ranging from 1985-2001. Rather than having to document copyright on every new version of XP that is produced MS simply acknowledges that every individual component is copyrighted and hence the entire package.
Copyrights do expire, but not for a long time, and that “1985-2001” isn’t the length of time, just listing, as Blake says, the starting years of multiple copyrights of subsets or components. Saying “Copyright 1985, 1986, 1987…” might be less confusing; they just didn’t do it that way.
Probably worth adding that SP2 and other updates will have their own copyright declarations bringing you up to date.
And in addition to that, it hasn’t been necessary to actually state the date of copyright on a work since 1989. (in the U.S.)
Copyrights do terminate. They last 95 years for corporations. See this nifty chart.