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[tonydax]

Hello everyone, I don't understand... we are told that the public domain is allowed to republish for sale and the titles published by DC, Marvel or Images are forbidden. If it's in the public domain, it stays in the public domain. No ? Let's take an example... The Spirit in the public domain, the eisner family we do not have the right to publish what is in the DP. I understand more?

[crashryan]

I am not a lawyer, nor an expert, but from what I've learned, it's possible for individual issues to fall into the public domain without the totality of the work doing so. For instance a newspaper Spirit section can be PD but that doesn't mean The Spirit as an 'intellectual property' is. I welcome someone more knowledgeable explaining the intricacies of this.

[The Australian Panther]

Tonydax,
Something is in the public domain if nobody currently owns the rights to it. 
You can do a new comic using the characters, so you own that comic but not the rights to the characters.
CB+ doesn't make money out of any of the books posted here.
Others do, and publish books of the Golden Age books we have here.
I don't know exactly how it works with the Spirit. Someone will still own the copyright, so you can't make new stories with the character. But the original works were in Newspapers and in Quality comics and nobody owns them, so we can post them. I think.
To learn more, go up to the search bar on CB+ and search for 'Public Domain'. It will take you to many threads on the subject.
cheers!