Quote from: Chris24601 on September 06, 2023, 09:32:50 AM

Quote from: Scooter on September 05, 2023, 09:14:42 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 05, 2023, 08:40:55 PM
For example, no corpo wants to touch the works of Edgar Rich Burroughs because his estate maintains the trademarks.

Wrong.  Tarzan is a trademark but the stories are past copyright.  So the entire story could be made into a movie by simply changing name of the character.  If the story was compelling enough it would be used

For someone constantly berating others as idiots, your reading comprehension isn't great.

Re-read what Box said... no one really wants to touch Tarzan as a commercial property because the ERB estate maintains trademarks on all the big names.

He wasn't arguing you couldn't use the stories because of copyright; he's arguing that because you can't slap the name "Tarzan" on it without paying a licensing fee to the ERB estate, few are interested in turning his public domain books into films or television.

Similarly, if Action Comics #1 became public domain tomorrow; sure you could use Superman, Clark Kent, Lois Lane and the Daily Star in your works; but you couldn't slap "Superman" on the cover, nor depict the hero in his traditional attire (that's trademarked).

In short, public domain Action Comics #1 is near worthless without the Superman (and associated) trademarks.

One of the main reasons you see certain villains return every half dozen years and various minor characters get limited series is just to maintain the trademarks.

Quotes to live by...







You will never get any other outcome. Ever. 

Anyway, I still see people writing fanfic of ERB's characters all the time. There's rule34 of John Carter and Dejah Thoris. There's even rule34 of John Carter and Tarzan.

Btw This is not an isolated phenomenon. Unscrupulous publishers now release public domain books with romance novel covers unrelated to the content because it sells: https://www.branding.news/2019/06/13/these-books-are-topping-the-charts-and-its-not-because-of-content/

I remember reading one absurdist tale where Dejah Thoris finds herself inexplicably transported to Westeros and, among other absurd events, mistakes a common house cat for an evil alien conqueror.

The public domain is good for keeping works preserved and recycled into new stories. If nothing else, then they at least get referenced or have youtube essays written on them.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 06, 2023, 07:51:41 PM
Anyway, I still see people writing fanfic of ERB's characters all the time. There's rule34 of John Carter and Dejah Thoris. There's even rule34 of John Carter and Tarzan.

Btw This is not an isolated phenomenon. Unscrupulous publishers now release public domain books with romance novel covers unrelated to the content because it sells: https://www.branding.news/2019/06/13/these-books-are-topping-the-charts-and-its-not-because-of-content/

I remember reading one absurdist tale where Dejah Thoris finds herself inexplicably transported to Westeros and, among other absurd events, mistakes a common house cat for an evil alien conqueror.

The public domain is good for keeping works preserved and recycled into new stories. If nothing else, then they at least get referenced or have youtube essays written on them.

You can use the ERB characters all you want even in commercial products, what you can't do is call your comic Tarzan, John Carter, etc. Because those are trademarks, but you can use the names inside without issue.

Lord of the Apes/Jungle
Warlord of Mars

Those are valid titles, just use the names of the characters INSIDE, because those ARE public domain, but you can't use them as the titles because of trademark.

But trademark is different from copyright, would you argue anyone should be able to fabricate a car and sell it as Ford Mustang?

Yeah. That's why I'm so mystified that Disney lobbied for extending copyright multiple times. Trademark already exists to prevent competitors from misleading customers.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 07, 2023, 01:01:32 PM
Yeah. That's why I'm so mystified that Disney lobbied for extending copyright multiple times. Trademark already exists to prevent competitors from misleading customers.

They want to prevent you from ever having the smallest chance to compete with them using their own shit.

Because they are evil.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on September 07, 2023, 01:24:22 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on September 07, 2023, 01:01:32 PM
Yeah. That's why I'm so mystified that Disney lobbied for extending copyright multiple times. Trademark already exists to prevent competitors from misleading customers.

They want to prevent you from ever having the smallest chance to compete with them using their own shit.

Because they are evil.

They've also managed to effectively trademark Steamboat Willie by turning the most iconic section of it into the animated Disney Animation logo.

I'm not sure that car models are quite analogous with creative works of fiction. But even to the degree that they are (there's a fair degree of creative work involved in their design), if you're allowed to work off a car model to design your own variant vehicle for commercial distribution, I would hope that you'd be allowed to advertise it as a variant of that design, even if you're not allowed to call it that model (such as "The New Road Stallion, based on the 19XX Mustang Ford, blah, blah, bah"). But the way trademark works you're not even allowed to mention that a story about an established character is about that character, even though the character is in your story, using the exact same name (you can't call it "Lord of the Jungle...a Tarzan story" or whatever).

Quote from: GeekyBugle on September 06, 2023, 08:37:26 PM

But trademark is different from copyright, would you argue anyone should be able to fabricate a car and sell it as Ford Mustang?

Ford already does that. They made an electric go cart and called it a Mustang. I suppose since it is their brand they can shit on it all they want.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on September 08, 2023, 04:43:19 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on September 06, 2023, 08:37:26 PM

But trademark is different from copyright, would you argue anyone should be able to fabricate a car and sell it as Ford Mustang?

Ford already does that. They made an electric go cart and called it a Mustang. I suppose since it is their brand they can shit on it all they want.

You should know Ford isn't "anyone", yes, it is their brand, their trademark and they can do with it as they see fit.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on September 08, 2023, 05:51:45 PM

Quote from: Exploderwizard on September 08, 2023, 04:43:19 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on September 06, 2023, 08:37:26 PM

But trademark is different from copyright, would you argue anyone should be able to fabricate a car and sell it as Ford Mustang?

Ford already does that. They made an electric go cart and called it a Mustang. I suppose since it is their brand they can shit on it all they want.

You should know Ford isn't "anyone", yes, it is their brand, their trademark and they can do with it as they see fit.

When all ones arguments fail why not go Straw Man?

EVERYTHING is a StRaWmAn!

Now the guy who calls everything a strawman is calling strawman on the OTHER guy who calls everything a strawman! This is gonna be good.

Strawmanception!