And they have been known to have very little humour with unauthorized use of those characters !

I think these characters are still owned by someone. Like Tarzan, which is owned by the estate of Edgar Rice Burroughs. I'm pretty sure Shadow and Doc Savage are owned by the heirs of their creators as well.

And Zorro, too, which is owned by a company called Zorro Productions, Inc.

Really, with something this complex, I probably should have just limited myself to the basic "Are X number of Quality comic books in the public domain?," to which the answer would be yes.

Or rather, just the specific question I got that led to this urban legend, which was "Now that they are killed, can they be used?," which would be no, as their deaths in the comic books mean nothing to their copyright/trademark stance.

By going into MORE depth, I ran the risk (which absolutely occurred) of failing to give enough details to be comprehensive.

Perhaps this could all be done as a future FAQ? It's quite fascinating stuff.

A few years ago I went down to the Library of Congress and looked into the matter of Quality Comics' copyrights and almost nothing that Quality Comics published in 1939-45 was copyrighted by "Quality Comics." Rather, consistent with what would have been the practice in the 1940's, Everett "Busy" Arnold, the publisher of Quality, filed for copyrights on the Quality material as an individual. He passed away before the copyrights came up for renewal. Once again, as I understand it, that meant his surviving spouse was the only entity legally entitled to renew the copyrights that came up for renewal in 1967-1973. As noted above, she didn't do so for any of the copyrights effecting Phantom Lady, Human Bomb, etc. However, if I'm remembering what I learned correctly, she did renew the copyrights for Plastic Man and the Blackhawks when books relevant to those characters came up for renewal. This makes sense because, at that time, in the late '60's - early '70's, DC was using those characters and would have wanted to maintain the copyright for them whereas they had no notion of reviving the earlier Quality Comics characters.

As for Trademark, as far as I can remember, DC Comics has never published a comic book titled "Phantom Lady." Meanwhile, AC Comics has put out books advertising "Phantom Lady" on the cover many times over the years when reprinting the old Quality and Fox "Phantom Lady" stories. So, as far as using the phrase "Phantom Lady" as a mark in trade in the comic book industry, it seems AC has a stronger claim to the mark than DC. When Verotik put out a book titled "Phantom Lady" about a decade or so ago it was AC not DC that sent out the cease and desist. Actions sometimes are telling. It seems DC's lawyers know that they have no trademark claim to the written phrase "Phantom Lady" in the comic book industry and, consequently, DC has never claimed that trademark.

DC has put out a Phantom Lady action figure through license, however, with "Phantom Lady" emblazoned on the packaging and probably would claim the trademark of the name in the toy industry. Also, their visual depiction of Phantom Lady (yellow costume, green accessories, glasses, blackout light) has been used on the covers of their comic books over the years, so they arguably may claim a trademark on the likeness of their Phantom Lady. Finally, in my opinion, the poster above is absolutely correct that DC Comics has the copyright on their version of Phantom Lady from the 1970's Freedom Fighters to the present. I don't think there's any valid legal argument to be made that they don't.

Thanks.

I believe there is also an issue about the point at which any of these characters is taken for public domain use.

While the Quality characters DC put together for the Freedom Fighters are in PD, and the stories published by Quality are most likely there as well, everything DC has published in the past 30 years with these characters is still under copyright.

A potential writers would have to limit themselves to the original characters and to the background material from the Quality books.

IIUC this is what AC has done with Nightveil. She exists as an exertion of the Phantom Lady material from prior to DC's first actual use of the character.

Okay, copyright issues so seem a little confusing. What about characters like the old pulp heroes that DC's borrowed over the years?

The Shadow and Doc Savage were published by Steet & Smith, who went under a long time ago.

Would Steet & Smith's copyright only be for magazines/novels or is it liscenced to DC

Basically Brian, I'm asking if The Shadow, Doc Savage and Tarzan are public domain?

I think it's safe to assume that characters from companies that went out of business before 1960s and weren't bought by someone else can be safely considered public domain.

As to why anyone would want to use them - same reason why people create Justice League pataches (spelling?). You can do whatever you want with them and change them however you like, something you can't do with DC/Marvel characters. Alan Moore did just that in Terra Obscura.

I forgot to mention that I actually went out and got the Catalog of Copyright Entries, and looked up, and at least the characters that we were discussing were, in fact, not renewed (Phantom Lady, Human Bomb, etc.).

But I agree, I only checked the ones from Quality. There may be other ones that AC is just infringing the copyright without anyone complaining. Good point.

But thanks for giving me the opportunity to mention that I checked out the copyright info, and I can officially say that the Quality characters mentioned before ARE in the public domain.

But why bother anyway when you can create the exact same character and just change a few names? That's all DC and Marvel bother to do! Hawkeye = Green Arrow = Golden Archer = The Arrow. Mockingbird = Black Canary = Black Cat (1940s). Quicksilver = Flash. Mister Fantastic = Elongated Man = Plastic Man. Squadron Supreme = Justice League. And so on.

It has a list of the characters they use.

I'd recommend being iffy with the Ray and Black Condor, as the more recent versions ARE in copyright.

Which of the characters would I be able to use?

Dollman? Phantom Lady? HUman Bomb? Ray? Black Condor?

Who else?

They CAN copyright the new version, though.

And they COULD own a trademark on "The Ray."