[ndriscoll]

Right, that weirdness is why it should be depreciated over the length of the copyright term. You spend $200k this year, and now you have a useful asset for the next 95 years (or 120 years if you never publish it).

If it turns out it's not useful, we could then allow companies publish the source and release it into the public domain to immediately "destroy" the asset (the copyright) and claim their deduction. So failed r&d projects would be deductible right away as long as the public gets them, and ones that result in a useful asset get depreciated based on how long they actually last, which is currently potentially multiple lifetimes.

[kelnos]

I don't think copyright term is a good rubric/measure here. For SaaS, a company can keep the software locked up indefinitely, regardless of copyright term. Employees can be contractually obligated not to publish source code, even if the copyright has expired.

Amortizing development cost over the useful life of the software is maybe a reasonable thing to do (I don't think it is, but let's for a minute say I agree), but determining "useful life" is not simple.

[jameshart]

I get your thinking here but copyright isn’t the only relevant intellectual property constraint.

Software built by a business is a trade secret independent of its copyrightability. Even after the expiry of copyright a business can continue to exploit it as a proprietary asset.