However, when I was consistent, Number 1000 was posted in 2011, and the subject was the rare DC ashcan, Double Action Comics #2.
I have always been interested in the subject of ashcans, a sample magazine slapped together in order to secure the copyright for the title with the Library of Congress, then tossed away (hence “ashcan.”). I wonder if today all of that stuff is done digitally, instead of print?
Click on the thumbnail for scans of the complete ashcan.
Titles as such aren't subject to copyright; instead, they are trademarked. That's why, under the title of Double Action Comics, it says “Reg. U. S. Pat. Office”, and that's why periodicals can hold exclusive rights to their titles long after the copyrights on their earliest issues have expired.
ReplyDelete(The same true of characters; they themselves are not protected by copyrights but by trademarks, and the trademarks on characters can be held long after stories in which they appeared are no longer protected by copyright. It's also possible for a story to be protected by copyright though its principal character is not protected in any way.)
The rules of trademarks are interesting. Warren might have successfully whalloped Fass over the use of “Eerie Publications”; certainly had someone registered a trademark for “Fizzbister” as a magazine title and Fass subsequently used “Fizzbister Publications” he could have been clobbered; but “Eerie” is more generic and therefore less subject to wide protection.
Daniel, as someone who holds onto a belief that what I am showing falls under the fair use category, I am aware of trademarks and copyrights.
ReplyDeleteThere have been several stories over the last few decades of how Mickey Mouse can still be protected, by having lobbyists for Disney petition Congress to change the laws to keep Mickey from becoming public domain.
In the early sixties, when Edgar Rice Burroughs' copyrights were expiring, the company that owned them, ERB, Inc., had trademarked the name Tarzan, and successfully fought off various attempts od writers to do new versions of the venerable ape man. I have no idea how it is working out now. I also noticed that ERB, Inc. is claiming trademarks on words like "Barsoom" for Burroughs' Mars stories. Mars, of course, can not be trademarked nor copyrighted, so those novels, which all have Mars in the title, began falling out of copyright over 50 years ago.