…if Congress had not changed Copyright Law in 1998. You kind of wonder what works people would come up with if anyone and everyone could create their own interpretation of Batman.
I always found it ironic that the driving force behind that change, Disney, made their fortune on public domain characters.
I’m not sure what people could do with the characters, since even if the copyright expired whoever owns the trademark on the characters would prevent them from being used commercially. At least that’s my limited understanding - I’ll wait for others to correct me.
Also while Batman might have been in the public domain, any of his villains or story elements created later on would not be. So you’d still have to be careful.
“Batman and Reuben just stopped Joe Kerr!”
Batman is trademarked. You could write stories about a caped vigilante who dresses like a bat, but you can’t call him Batman or else be in violation. And trademarks never expire.
I would expect that all the major Batman villains are also trademarked.
Right, all that the copyright expiring would mean would be that you could legally make Xeroxes of that first comic and hand them out or sell them or whatever. It wouldn’t let you copy any later comics (until their terms come up, too), nor would it allow you to make your own comics.
I’m as ready as anyone to take potshots at Disney, but I believe it was on this board that I learned that the real reason for the term extension was not protecting the Mouse, to bring the US into compliance with the Berne Convention on Copyrights.
but he was prepared.
I’m pretty certain this is false. The production of derivative works fall under copyright law. What Trademark law would prevent is using “Batman” as a title or to promote your new work. Just to be sure, I started this thread to find out.
For the win.
Trademark will prevent you from using the name “Batman”, but it’ll also prevent you from using his “distinctive likeness”, as both can be (and almost certainly are) trademarked. Basically, anything you can do that would let your readers recognize “hey, this is about Batman” is something that can be trademarked.
Someone else saying this besides Chuck and me! I think I felt a tear trickle down my cheek. Ignorance is being fought.
FTR, I agree with Chronos. Trademark law is far more powerful than copyright in many commercial ways.
I worked a summer for the law firm representing Siegel and Shuster in their copyright termination case against DC a couple years back. Basically, there’s a provision in the Copyright Act that allows creators to sue and have their creations returned to them under certain situations. One of the arguments DC fought back with was the trademark protection - basically, the same argument many here have made in this thread, that while the ‘copyright’ on Action Comics #1 (and Superman himself, characters are copyrightable) could be returned in theory, it wouldn’t work in reality because so many parts of Superman, such as his name, his SUPERMAN logo, his S chest logo, etc, are trademarks of DC.
There wasn’t a lot of legal authority on the subject… probably because the idea is so relatively new. I think the most we could find was line from Justice Scalia in Dastar v. 20th Century Fox (a case dealing with a producer selling an out-of-copyright work) in which he made the comment of “in construing the Lanham Act, we have been “careful to caution against misuse or over-extension” of trademark and related protections into areas traditionally occupied by patent or copyright” which we used to try and argue meant copyright trumped trademark.
s I understand it, the Superman case got decided on other grounds, so it’d be interesting to see how an actual decision on this would end up.
“And after that, they’re off to capture P.N. Gwynne, Reed L. Orr, and Kat Woo Mann.”
And who exactly do you think cared enough about copyright to decide the terms of the Berne Convention?
I 'm involved in using engineering standards, and I’ve watched software standards for years, and it never ceases to amaze me that people think “standards” come from some magical happy valley of independent technical excellence. It’s more like Lord of the Flies. The Berne convention was no different.
FWIW This wasn’t meant to a tirade against Disney; I just thought it was interesting trivia. I also wasn’t sure how copyrights and trademarks interacted so this discussion has been interesting.
Two other items that would have been in the public domain:
The Wizard of Oz
Gone with the Wind.
The Germans, not wanting Mein Kampf to enter the public domain. That was several years earlier. The U.S. had little choice but to change their laws or else the two largest book markets in the world would have been out of sync.
Which has stalled it going PD in Germany until the far, far future of January 1, 2016. None of us will live to see that happen, I am sure.
Mein Kampf copyrights is one hella poor excuse for the extension. Since that had an author that died some time ago. It’s the works-for-hire (corporate) extensions that really matters.
Countries make odd exceptions regarding copyrights now and then. E.g., Peter Pan has been granted limited extended copyright protection in the UK. So if Germany wanted to permanently extend Mein Kampf’s copyright there, no one would raise a stink.
Note that the OP is referring only to the first Batman comics. Without the extensions, anyone could reprint those starting this year. That’s all, just reprint them. DC obviously needed the extension to protect their incredibly valuable early comics reprint business. Money, which of course, they are known for so generously sharing with estates of the original writers and artists.
Not to derail the thread but I’d never wondered who gets the author royalties from Mein Kampf since the author died and left no known heirs…until now.
In his will, Hitler had a few personal bequests, but left the bulk of his estate to the German Nazi Party. My recollection is that the Party was dissolved by the Allied occupation government, and its assets eventually transferred to the German government, so the federal Republic holds the copyright to Mein Kampf.