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[little-bishop]

Hi I came across some Classics Illustrated comics - they are old away where from the 40-50's. You would think they are in the public domain. Are they?
However, upon reading the comic book price guide it says the following:

Classics Illustrated was sold to Patrick Frawley and his Catholic Publication - Twin Circle and eventually by 1971 they had publication problems. They then sold to First Publishing, Berkley Press and Classics Media Group in 1988 in which they had bought the right to use the OLD CI art, Logo, and name from the Frawley group -they also plan to reprint the old CI.

Thus, my question is, yes there are many old comic book publishers that are out of business, but how do we know the rights have not been sold? If sold as appears to be the case of CI, then these comics do not appear to be in the public domain?

Please help!! Also nice site, any other sites like this, or like it in terms of scanning old comics/entertainment mags that also has to deal with public domain issues?

Well, please help answer my questions so I can be confident I am uploading public domain stuff!

Thanks

LB

[Aussie500]

Unfortunately l do not think they would be considered public domain, as a series that was still going in the late 60's the copyright would have been still been active when the changes were made to the copyright act in 1976. And since they were still being reissued up to at least the mid 80's l would consider them of limits

[little-bishop]

Thanks, I thought the general rule was that comics up to 1963 copyright's where not automatically renewed. Thus, there is a good chance small/out of business companies did not renew thus being available in the public domain in 1991. Thus everything from 1964 automatically has been renewed IE: 1964 + 28 years which takes us to 1992 + now there is an automatic extention of 67 years which would take us to copyright protection to 2058! (the period that this is effect is for 1964-1977)

Thus, would you say that even series that go from 1960 to 1968 would still be copyrighted? Or only up until 1963?

[Aussie500]

Probably you know about as much if not more than us little-bishop, we are still learning here. Generally with the early golden age comics if a renewel was not lodged it would be public domain, however since a full record of renewals is not availble online yet for renewals before 1978, it is hard to be sure if something is public domain, just because record of the renewal cannot be found. As the Classic Illustrated title was still being printed, and is still actively being published they are not suitable for our site, even if there was no renewal lodged they could still cause us to much trouble. Some small out of business publishers had the copyright in the name of the owner of the company or the copyright was transfered to the creator of the work or even sold to another company, and if they renewed the copyright it is still protected. Of course comics printed in the 1950's would have still been under copyright protection on the 1st Jan 1978 and so are technically still protected l suppose, but if the company does not exist and nobody currently owns the copyright......
Of course if the current copyright owner was to contact us and point out our mistake we would remove their comics in a flash

[little-bishop]

Thanks, I am 15 and I know nothing about this stuff. However, my dad is a lawyer and a comic collector. I do not like law, but I like comic books and I want to discover all the new comics that were printed and may never been read again. I want us to make a list of publishers (perhaps I can help start) that shows, why this company's books really are in the public domain. I am noticing that even by typing charlton comics in google/wiki....the following:

"But in 1986, Charlton Comics went out of business; Charlton Publications followed suit in 1991, and its building and press were demolished in 1999.

Editor Robin Snyder oversaw the sale of some properties to their creators, though the bulk of the rights was purchased by Canadian entrepreneur Roger Broughton. He would produce several reprint titles under the company name of ACG (having also purchased the rights to the old American Comics Group properties), and announced plans to restart Charlton Comics. This had yet to occur as of the mid-2000s, beyond a few reprints."

I get frustrated because I thought ACG was in the public domain and so was Charlton? But this seems to show that they are not? How do I know all the rights (I MEAN ALL THE RIGHTS) were sold to others?
Thus it would appear based on this info ACG and Charlton should not be on this site as well?

I really want to make a list of public domain publishers with PROOF that they most likely are in the public domain. How do we do this? Or start? How about we all start this, as this is essentially the CORE of this website...


little-bishop

[John C]

In the end, this has little to do with the company, and everything to do with paperwork.

The laws for periodicals differ a tiny bit in some places, but the general idea is that copyright (when acquired correctly) lasted for twenty-eight years, then could be renewed for another twenty-eight.  That's about it.  So that means there are three possibilities and some...gray areas.

1.  Copyright and renewal have both expires:  Impossible for comic books, because renewals became automatic (and longer) in 1978 or so, and only things published prior to 1923 fit the bill.

2.  Copyright term expired and no renewal was made:  This is the case that involves defunct companies .  If you fold and didn't sell the copyright to anybody, there was probably nobody around to renew.  You can find good research-fodder starting from here:
     http://www.kingkong.demon.co.uk/ccer/ccer.htm
Find the publication year.  Click on the renewal year(s).  At the very bottom of the page, you'll find renewals for the year.  So, for example, on this page (1970's renewals, which would've mostly been published in 1942):
     http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/cce/cache/pdrn1970f403.gif
you can see that three issues of "Batman" were renewed (#14-16), but the first issue of Nedor's "Black Terror" book isn't there.  You still need to check the surrounding years, in case there was a mixup, but if there's nothing, then "Black Terror #1" is public domain.

3.  No original copyright:  There is, of course, a second reason that there's no renewal.  The book may not have been protected by copyright in the first place.  Usually, this is because the copyright notice in the comic isn't presented correctly, and that was a requirement as recently as 1989.

That's the easy stuff.  If that all fails, there are two more possibilities:

4.  The copyright owner has donated the book to the public domain:  I don't know of any instance where this has happened, but it's possible.  It's also possible that you (yes, any specific you asking) might be able to convince the current copyright holder to do that.  After all, if you're really nice to them and explain that you'd like grandpa (or whoever passed the rights to them) to be deservedly well-known, they may well drop the rights or give you special permission to circulate the comic.  After all, what's the average modern person going to do with the rights to a sixty-year-old comic that nobody has heard of except us?

5.  The copyright currently stands, but nobody owns it:  This is the other confusing part, when companies go out of business.  Usually, they sell some of their assets, but overlook others.  If you can trace the transfer of rights from the original copyright holder to a dead end...well, you're still technically infringing on the copyright.  However, there's nobody with the authority to sue you for doing so.

Note that this last case doesn't mean "you can't find the heir."  It means that you've proven that the rights were never transferred before that person or organization died or folded, and there was no contingency to do so on death (like a will).

I hope that helps, some.  Oh, and remember that this is all on an issue-by-issue basis.  Just because I couldn't find a renewal for Black Terror #1, I can't assume that Black Terror #2 wasn't renewed either.  Likewise, even though I found Batman #14, Batman #13 might've been overlooked by the DC legal team.

[Aussie500]

For the purposes of the site however we find one renewal the whole series is off limits, the records are not complete and not finding a record is no guarantee a renewal was not made. The only exception to that being the MLJ Pep comics, where the copyright was renewed from issue #72, so all the golden age ones were fine to host   Also you cannot really do it by company, most of the Fawcett titles are public domain, but all the Captain Marvel related titles were renewed. Most of the Toby Press comics are public domain, but the Buck Rogers ones were reprints from the strips, printed under licence and would still be covered under the strip copyright which l am unable to find at the moment, but trademark and copyright are currently held by the Dille family trust. Some of the Harvey comics are public domain and some are not, which is why they do not yet have a section on the site

[John C]

My thoughts exactly (though I didn't know about Pep at all), and it wouldn't be a bad idea to replace "is" with "should be" in all my references to public domain.  It's far better to be a little too exclusive than to make trouble due to a mysterious exemption or oversight.

And yeah, I didn't even want to start thinking about reprints.  That's a huge mess.  And then there are partial adaptations/homages, along the lines of Marvelman/Miracleman, which make this all look like a walk in the park!

[Aussie500]

Well we will not be hosting reprints/foriegn issues unless they are also printed in the golden age era and also public domain. And since it is a lot harder to tell if the non American prints are public domain or not, they will unfortunately have to wait until someone has time to research them (poor Torry is still waiting for me to approve his aussie issues  )

[John C]

Hm.  Would it be worth a forum topic/section specifically for "we have this comic and don't have time to research it"?  With a good list of resources, between all of us, I'm sure we can pitch in and figure things out, and lighten the load on folks like you.

[little-bishop]

Hey great idea jcolag Lets do that...I have some comics, I can check this site out everyday while i do other things. Just wanted to know anyone's thoughts on I.W. Enterprises? They are a reprint publisher - and tried I guess to reprint old defunct companies. I.W. Enterprises is in the golden age, and they are defunct themselves. So its like defunct company then reprinted by another defunct company any possiblity of an IW Enterprises section, I have some of there comics....one off the top of my head is Indian Braves #1

Cheers,

little-bishop

[cimmerian32]

Actually, I.W. is an early Silver Age company who reprinted Golden Age books and stories, often with no date.  I believe they started around 1958.

Cimm

[Yoc]

and IW/Super wasn't above doing a little illegal publishing of their own.
The Spirit, Plastic Man.. others.   

Not a reputable company at all.