To follow up, we're hard to offend. Disagreement is fine. Abusing people, we warn you and kick you out. You're a long way from there.
Also, I disagree on the trademark. While it'd be within DC's authority to ignore trademark infringement where they know about it, anybody they sue can successfully point to that single instance as an abandonment. I don't know what their position on the matter is, but it's...let's say "inadvisable" to know about an infringement and not do something about it.
Paramount, for example, I know pretty much bends over backwards for fans as long as they make contact ahead of time, add a pile of disclaimers, and accept no money for the work.
If you're not publishing, though, that's obviously all irrelevant.
Firstly, thanks for you and your community's open mind when comes to discussion "heat". I hope to post on more stuff in the future, controversial or otherwise
Regarding your latest, more specific point made mentioning abandonment... I have to concede that I thought the same thing while we were posting back and forth. And since you brought it up in this context, I'll say my own thoughts on that because intellectual property discussion is of interest to me.
Get ready for another dry, ramble
:
I'm thinking that the DCU superhero scenario where abandonment would be appplicable in a context such as Creeper fanfic would be DC's lawyers anticipating a specfic chain of events.
This hypothetical situation DC would have to prepare for in the context of my Creeper graphic novel fan fic would involve DC having a legal battle with an accused violator (not me) of DC's Creeper copyright/trademark. This violator would be pointing their finger at DC and trying to prove that the ownership had lapsed due to abandonment. My proposed Creeper web graphic novel would not be considered as a potential tool for a DC-accused violator to use as grounds for abandonment unless my project was a popular piece, and that in the midst of the project's popularity that I was harming DC's potential to make a profit on Creeper, and additionally, that I was never sent a cease and desist notice.
And I think, even then, that DC could use the position (either lying or telling the truth) that since they personally surmised that my derivative project was not a threat to their finances (directly or indirectly), then that's why they didn't make a move to protect themselves. In other words, DC has a solid case for being covered against abandonment accusations. Like you implied in your post above, a thing like me not using their property to directly profit through some kind of monetary sales, essentially deflates the issue. It wouldn't be end-all proof of course, but in court, any profit made from my Creeper project (or the harm that it may've done to DC's property) would be more ambiguous and DC could fill in the blanks as they saw fit, contrasting my work (and how it affected them) with the work of the guy they actuallly wanted to sue.
One more thing of note, in the Creeper case in particular, abandonment doesn't seem to be an issue despite the character's low profile in the DC stable. DC actually seems to include that character constantly in it's comicbook releases, if only in background panels, every year or so. Now, I may be wrong that that covers abndonment issues. I don't know the specifics of what they have to do as far as the "rate of using" the character to cover themselves. But if the character was more popular, I don't thin abandonment would be an issue no matter HOW many potential violators were ignored by DC. I mean, Superman or Batman would never have the abandonment term connected with them.
