

Unless the CEO also sits on the board of directors … but at least they won’t be making the decision unilaterally.
Exactly, and even then the CEO isn’t the final all-powerful boss.
The person that holds the office of CEO can also be as high as holding the Chairman of the Board role, which would give them incredible power in the organization. However, even then their decisions can be overridden in extreme cases by the rest of the board. I’ll admit that is pretty rare though.
Your thesis missed one important element right here:
Practically or legally speaking there isn’t a restriction of creativity. Its a restriction on the ability to profit from that creativity or negatively affect the profits of the rights holder with your work using their name.
If you call yourself the Burger King in your kitchen, there’s no trademark infringement there. However, if you start selling you food and calling yourself the Burger King, then that is a trademark violation. If you want to write Twilight fan fiction using the characters and story lines from the books, you’re free to do so. There is no copyright violation. However, if you want to profit from your expansions to another author’s work, you have to rename the characters and setting and call it “Fifty shades of grey”.
I’ll agree with this though. Large rights holders have been able to get changes to law that exceed the original IP mandates. This means extensions wildly beyond what was reasonable before, or getting things protected by IP law that are questionable at best.