Comic Book Plus Forum

About The Comic Books We Have => Comics Not Allowed => Topic started by: glammazon on March 17, 2007, 07:38:51 PM

Title: Which Of These Characters Are In The Public Domain?
Post by: glammazon on March 17, 2007, 07:38:51 PM: I have a list here of characters that I think may be in the public domain:

1. Minimidget

2. Thun'Da, King Of The Congo

3. Rulah, Jungle Goddess

4. Tygra, Queen Of The Flame People

5. Camilla, Queen Of The Lost Kingdom

Are any or all of these characters in the public domain? I'd love to know for certain.
Title: Re: Which Of These Characters Are In The Public Domain?
Post by: boox909 on March 17, 2007, 07:55:39 PM: I keep thinking that Aussie may have posted some resources for researching such an issue. A couple others have posted on this recently (if memory serves) ...and about 4 weeks or so back in the archives I believe.

B.

Quote from: glammazon on March 17, 2007, 07:38:51 PM

I have a list here of characters that I think may be in the public domain:

1. Minimidget

2. Thun'Da, King Of The Congo

3. Rulah, Jungle Goddess

4. Tygra, Queen Of The Flame People

5. Camilla, Queen Of The Lost Kingdom

Are any or all of these characters in the public domain? I'd love to know for certain.
Title: Re: Which Of These Characters Are In The Public Domain?
Post by: Aussie500 on March 20, 2007, 11:38:21 AM: Trademark deals with names and characters the copyright is taken out on a specific title, so we would need to know the comic title in order to look up if the copyright was renewed or not. If the publisher of the comic has a group on the site already we would consider it public domain provided it is a Golden Age comic (1955 or earlier), and not a reprint, it needs to be a scan of the original or a scan of the microfiche of the original. So the Thun'da king of the Congo published by Magazine Enterprises is fine as is the Fox published Rulah, Jungle Goddess. If you want to know about the others you will need to give us the name of the comic/comics they appeared in
Title: Re: Which Of These Characters Are In The Public Domain?
Post by: glammazon on March 21, 2007, 03:25:55 AM: Okay, here are a list of the comics these characters first appeared in:

1. AMAZING MAN COMICS #5(Minimidget)

2. THUN'DA, KING OF THE CONGO #1 (Thun'Da, who was called Thunda in the serial version)

3. ZOOT COMICS #7 (Rulah, the Jungle Goddess)

4. EXCITING COMICS #45 (Tygra, Queen of the Flame People)

5. JUNGLE COMICS #3 (Camilla, Queen of the Lost Kingdom)
Title: Re: Which Of These Characters Are In The Public Domain?
Post by: Aussie500 on March 22, 2007, 12:36:17 PM: All of the above we would consider public domain and there are issues available from each series hosted on the download site under their respective publishers
Title: Re: Which Of These Characters Are In The Public Domain?
Post by: namlevram on June 02, 2008, 05:09:56 PM: Quote from: aussie500 on March 20, 2007, 11:38:21 AM

Trademark deals with names and characters the copyright is taken out on a specific title

In his book "Amazing ... but false" (2007) David Diefendorf, in a small section on copyright, states:
"One thing you can't copyright is the title of a book."

The book is American*, but I think this statement is fairly universal in application, as I have seen 2 or 3 completely different books (with different authors etc) bearing the same title.

* I am English, now retired to Spain.
Title: Re: Which Of These Characters Are In The Public Domain?
Post by: Aussie500 on June 04, 2008, 10:52:03 AM: The title name itself is not copyright protected, the individual issue is, under whatever name it was published under, so no l cannot look up copyright information based on characters, l have to have the title of whatever they appeared in to see if the copyright was renewed.