Copyright expirations in comics.
This was prompted by a Slashdot post, but consider:
It’s nearly the end of 2009.
If the original 1790 copyright
maximum term of 28 years was still in effect, everything that had been
published by 1981 would be now be in the public domain — which means most of the Marvel Universe up to Dazzler and the She-Hulk, The Omega Men, The Far Side, Bloom County, Captain Victory and The Greatest American Hero would be available for remixing and mashing up.
If the 1909 copyright
maximum term of 56 years (if renewed) were still in force, everything
published by 1953 would now be in the public domain, freeing the Phantom Stranger, Captain Comet, Peanuts, Frontline Combat, Forbidden Worlds and Tales From The Crypt. (Marvelman would kick free in 2010, as would Mad magazine.)
If the 1976 copyright act
term of 75 years still applied, everything
published by 1934 would now be in the public domain, including Doc Savage, Mandrake the Magician, Dick Tracy and Terry and the Pirates.
But thanks to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, nothing in the US will go free until 2018, when 1923 works expire. (Assuming Congress doesn’t step in with a Copyright Extension Act of 2017. What are the odds?)
Now, this doesn’t mean that rights don’t revert to somebody– as we’ve discovered, rights to Superman and the like can revert to the original creators. But it’s fascinating to consider a world where anyone could write a story about Batman as easily as one can write a story about Dracula.
I'm not by any means conversant with the pros/cons fo various limits on copyrights, but I'd have thought that the expiration clock would start when a creator ceases to publish a character, not when they start to.
See, that's where we get into copyright/trademark issues; copyright (on the specific story/illustration/movie) counts from when it is "fixed in it final form" – for that one piece.Trademark, however, counts from the last renewal.And it's trademark that says you can't produce new material about someone else's character.For instance, Houghton-Mifflin goofed up with their first editions of "Lord of the Rings" and invalidated the US copyright on that specific version; anyone could legally publish it (and Ace Books did, in competition with the authorised Ballantine paperback version).But Tolkien (and now his estate) still owned the rights to the characters, world, etc., and were the only people who could write (well, as i said in my other comment, the only ones who could publish) new stories about Bilbo or Frodo or Gandalf or whatever…
Actually, even if the copyright lapsed, allowing anyone to reprint existing stories about batman, the trademark would still, i think, be valid, barring someone writing new stories about Bats. (Well, from publishing them; nobody can stop you from writingstories about anything you please. Publishing them is another matter entirely.)
No. You could write new stories about a character whose initial appearances had lapsed into public domain, even if later appearances have not yet done so– you just can't reference those later stories that are still in copyright. Think of it as forking codebase in computer software. You can write stuff that lies on top of stuff that's in the public domain, and you can own the code for what you create.For example, I can publish a Zorro story. But I couldn't publish Disney's version of it.
Actually (as evidenced by the various Oz comics over the past 20 years), the expiration of copyright allows you to both freely reprint the original work, and to create derivative works of the original work.Trademark (again, as I understand it, and IANAL) prevents someone from producing a work that uses your trademark to sell it.So – As the original Oz books fell into the public domain, it became possible to create new works derived from them without any approval from L. Frank Baum's estate/heirs. However, as the MGM "The Wizard of Oz" movie is still under copyright, you can't draw the characters to look like Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, etc.To go back to the Superman litigation, if the Siegels and/or Shusters reclaimed their portion of the copyright for the Superman story from ACTION COMICS #1, they could publish comics featuring a character that looks like Superman did at that point, and call the character Superman in the comic – but the couldn't title the book THE NEW SUPERMAN COMICS; in fact, I suspect the word "Superman" would have to be avoided on the cover. That's because DC would continue to have a trademark on that name. Precise costume details might also be an issue, as DC presumably has the five-sided, "Diamond"-shaped S-logo solidly trademarked. The original costume, if usable on covers, would probably always have to involve poses that clearly display the differences in the two costumes, as anything that obscured those differences could be seen as trademark infringement.
Look for the term to be extended again around 2018, definitely before 2023. Why? Because, under the current law, a certain multi-billion-dollar rodent's first appearances would hit public domain in 2023.I'm just sayin'…