[tbdeinc]

Golden people,
(sounds strange somehow)

I have a puzzler of a thought...

item: Kubert's 1,000,000 BC TOR comics which are here and public.

what if: an artist takes the scans, and creates new highrez line art. MIND YOU, the scans would not be cleaned up, but re-traced... all lines and type redone from scratch...

examples here:
http://www.georgepetergatsis.org/INKingANDcolorING-2.mp4
http://www.georgepetergatsis.org/powergirl_ink2color.mp4

a) Would this still be public domain?

or

b) Woud it be a new copyright-able by the artist?

if it's option (b), then would the TOR or 1,000,000 character's be Kubert's ownership or the artist?

Additional thought:

Will the artist be able to sell the artwork as a single page or full comicbook given option (a) or in small part option (b)

A puzzler hmmm....


George

[John C]

In short, if it's public domain, then everybody owns it (after all, taxpayer dollars subsidized the monopoly on publishing rights for the copyright term) and can do whatever they want with it.  You can republish Hamlet or paraphrase it or whatever.

Now, can you copyright you're kinda-sorta-new thing?  There are different questions wrapped up in there.  You can claim copyright on anything, even fraudulently, without any penalty.  However, if an infringement suit goes to court, the judge may throw it out if there isn't enough original work to be "really" copyrightable in her opinion.

In other words, I can put my own copyright statement on Hamlet, but if I sue you for copying it, the judge will have a fine time giggling at me.

So, that doesn't answer your question at all, of course, because there kind of aren't any real hard and fast answers.

[tbdeinc]

Curious...

DC recently did a 6 issue TOR comic with Kubert doing story and art...

does this act grab hold of the public domain character and title and bring it back to copyrighted status?


George

[narfstar]

The character may be TRADEMARKED to DC the original work still public domain. Marvel owns the trademark name Captain Marvel so DC can not use it prominently on the cover for promotion. DC owns the trademark image of Captain Marvel (Shazam) but not the public domain GA stories.

[tbdeinc]

HOLEY MOLEY!!!

So you can take the GA Captain Marvel content, give it a new name on the cover and publish the comic!!??

WOOZERs!!!


George

[kquattro]

Curious...DC recently did a 6 issue TOR comic with Kubert doing story and art...does this act grab hold of the public domain character and title and bring it back to copyrighted status?

TOR is not now, nor has it ever been, a public domain character. Joe Kubert has owned the rights to TOR since 1955 when Michael St. John signed the rights over to Kubert after his father Archer died. This I know from Kubert himself.

I know there are TOR comics on this site published by St. John. I don't know if those are public domain since St. John owned the character at the time, but anything published after 1955 is definitely owned by Kubert. Since St. John signed it over to Kubert, would there have been an automatic understanding that he owned the rights to the pre-1955 publications? Maybe someone better versed in copyright law can explain it.

--Ken Q

[John C]

In hopes of answering both Ken and George (and realizing that there, again, aren't any bold-faced canonical ANSWERS), "rights" are funny things.  DC owns the "rights" to Fawcett, Quality, and Charlton properties, among others, but since many (but not all) of the books are in the public domain and the trademarks aren't kept current, what do they really own?

Since you can't (so far, and in the United States...except under very limited circumstances involving foreign war heroes that don't really apply here), bring something back under copyright, then the only possibility remaining is trademark, plus whatever has not yet fallen into the public domain.

So in the Kubert case, Joe continues to hold a monopoly on the publishing rights to whatever was renewed.  He (presumably) also owns the name and character design as his literal "mark of trade"--in other words, an assurance that all comic products sold as "Tor" come from him.  (Again, that's the perpetual Disney problem--a cake with Donald Duck's face from a local bakery doesn't have Disney's quality assurance, so they must stomp them down.)

So, first and most obviously, you may not use anything that's under copyright, because the copyright owner has an (temporary) exclusivity agreement with the government.  Second, anything that has fallen into the public domain can be used for any purpose, including resale.  However, third, you may not use someone else's trademark as part of your "trade dress," because it implies association or endorsement.

So basically, yes, you can take an issue of Captain Marvel Adventures or Tor (assuming it's in the public domain), and as long as you don't step on anybody's trademark on the "sales features" (the cover, basically), there'd be nothing illegal about reprinting and selling it.

(And all that, of course, is with the caveat that I have no formal legal training.  I don't even play a lawyer on TV.)

[kquattro]

So in the Kubert case, Joe continues to hold a monopoly on the publishing rights to whatever was renewed.  He (presumably) also owns the name and character design as his literal "mark of trade"--in other words, an assurance that all comic products sold as "Tor" come from him.

Do you remember the TOR reprints DC published circa 1975? I don't have any on hand, but if someone does, can they check the indicia to see if they were copyrighted by Kubert? Some of these were direct reprints of the St. John books and I'm wondering that if Kubert claimed the copyright then on the St. John material, that perhaps he has always owned the rights to it? John C: can you help with this?

--Ken Q

[John C]

I don't have any of the books in question, but some things that come to mind:

DC almost certainly put its own copyright into the indicia, even if it's a reprint of someone else's material.  That's because they own the "package" of the new cover, advertisements, text pieces, and so forth.

If DC believed that the original was owned by Kubert, there'll be a credit added somewhere that the stories are copyright by and licensed from Kubert.

Even if the book was in the pbulic domain, there'll also presumably be a "created by" credit or similar (i.e., "Tor, and distinctive likenesses, blah, blah, are registered copyrights of Joe Kubert") for the use of the trademark.

Lastly, given their reputation with Siegel and Shuster, DC has actually been extremely generous when it comes to licensing, even paying fees to people who had no legal interest.  When Roy Thomas adapted Philip Wylie's "Gladiator" in the Young All-Stars series, for example, the Wylie estate received a royalty check for it, even though Wylie's lawyer botched the original copyright in 1930 (leading to the case against Superman being thrown out of court).  I don't know details, but I've heard that wasn't a unique situation.

My prediction is that the entire series will have a consistent copyright/licensing statement attributing to Kubert without specifics of issue.  As I said upstream, it's not an offense to claim copyright when it's not yours (as long as it's not somebody else's, I mean), so a generic statement to be stamped on every issue would be the smartest way to go.

[narfstar]

Tor v1 all are copyright 1975 NPP while v2 is copyright and trademark 2008 to Tell-a-graphics which is the Kuberts

[tbdeinc]

This is very interesting regarding trademarks and copyrights on the public domain stuff...


George