I hadn't heard if it passed, but there was a news article recently ( Even linked further back in the thread and has its own thread, I believe ) about a proposed measure that would cause the rights to "dead" online games to expire if unused after a few years. But I believe it basically only grants a form of "fair use" protection to freely run private server emulators.
Basically it comes down to "use it or lose it".
Example: Fawcett Comics created Captain Marvel/Shazam. They were sued by DC and had to stop publication of the series. Later they go out of business and DC comics swoops in and buys up their characters and basically throws them into the toy closet and doesn't use them.
As a result, trademarks for a book titled Captain Marvel lapsed due to no usage and as soon as it became available in the 60's, Marvel Comics snatches that trademark and published their own Captain Marvel book starring Captain Mar-Vell.
After Mar-Vell perished from cancer in the early 80's, they had some other characters take the name Captain Marvel and would occassionally reprint Mar-Vell's adventures, and even made an Untold Legend of Captain Marvel mini-series. Basically Marvel has to publish a book or a series titled Captain Marvel every few years to retain the trademark as they refuse to let it lapse.
Now Carol Danvers is Captain Marvel and her book has been running for years.
As a result DC comics now refers to him as SHAZAM as they cannot publish any book titled Captain Marvel. I believe he can still be called Captain Marvel within the pages of their books, but they just stated he is now SHAZAM.