Can you explain your line of thinking here? How does the ability to use another company’s intellectual property restore creativity? It just seems like a path to allow bootlegging.
If let's say Star Wars falls out of copyright tomorrow, economically that has two effects. One, Disney loses a ton of future revenue. Two, countless Disney other people create derivatives of Star Wars, and they make money from those. Competition is increased.
So the expiration of a copyright results in a sharing of the wealth. The wealth generating potential along with the creative potential is passed along to all members of society. Our culture becomes richer and deeper. A great example of this is all the works that build on the mythos created by HP Lovecraft, one of the last great ones created before Congress started indefinitely extending copyright. Lovecraft wrote great literature and some of the authors that built on his world are fantastic as well, I'm sure they've come up with countless ideas he never considered. But as long as Congress keeps on extending copyright, nothing we create today will ever become like that.
There is of course an important question about what is fair and how long a copyright should last. Most people these days agree that it should last for at least the author's lifetime, maybe long enough to benefit their kids and grandkids as well. But the status quo is basically permanent copyright which prevents substantial creative and economic benefits to society.
With long copyright terms, it encourages copyright holders to milk a single work for the length of the copyright (90+ years) and therefore discourages the creation of something new. It also encourages people to obtain copyrights to leverage them for profit, rather than making anything at all. A child of an artist can spend their entire life supported by their parent's copyright, and never has to make anything unique for as long as they live.
How is any of this good for creativity?
Here's one key bit from the OP: - - - - -
But the lawsuits have been where he’s really highlighted the absurdity of modern copyright law. After winning one of the lawsuits a year ago, he put out a heartfelt statement on how ridiculous the whole thing was. A key part:
There’s only so many notes and very few chords used in pop music. Coincidence is bound to happen if 60,000 songs are being released every day on Spotify—that’s 22 million songs a year—and there’s only 12 notes that are available.
In the aftermath of this, Sheeran has said that he’s now filming all of his recent songwriting sessions, just in case he needs to provide evidence that he and his songwriting partners came up with a song on their own, which is depressing in its own right.
Three, the derivatives are made and Disney starts marketing "Disney's Star Wars" which continue to be the high-demand (and high-value) versions. The situation is unchanged.
For example, you can currently buy The Little Mermaid in non-Disney form[1], but Disney's version is what most people want.
[1] - https://www.amazon.com/s?k=little+mermaid+Hans+Christian+And...