Conan and Red Sonja Rights Holders Send Cease and Desist To Fanfic Creators

[ZariusTwo]

Comic Creators John Allison and Ben Dunne have been hit by cease and desists from the rights holders of Conan and Red Sonja. Allison created the comic Conan and the Blood Egg in the UK, where Conan is public domain, but that's NOT the case in the United States, and since this was an online webcomic, Allison could have profited from it worldwide...that can't happen. Dunne in the meantime had created a parody character called BLUE Sonja, but couldn't evade legal 'red' tape (hur hur) so he's redesigned her and renamed her Kendra


https://bleedingcool.com/comics/creators-getting-cease-desists-over-conan-and-red-sonja/

[neatoman]

So what legitimate proof do they have there were any profits made in the US? Conan is public domain character just about everywhere outside the US, has been for 18 years and enforcing American law outside of the US... Is stupid. Besides, the character is almost public domain in the US anyway, there's literally only three years left...

[oldmanwinters]

Huh, didn't know they were already P.D. across the pond.

Kinda wondering if something like this will happen with Godzilla in 2032.

[The Deadman]

So what legitimate proof do they have there were any profits made in the US? Conan is public domain character just about everywhere outside the US, has been for 18 years and enforcing American law outside of the US... Is stupid. Besides, the character is almost public domain in the US anyway, there's literally only three years left...

Probably depends on where the domain it was hosted on is located.

[sdp]

Renaming an obvious parody Blue Sonja to Kendra might've been a blessing in disguise. It might give her that push of it being a different character instead of being treated as just a parody. Now if she was indeed just a parody then in that case I don't see why they'd need to change her name.

Kinda wondering if something like this will happen with Godzilla in 2032.
Isn't Japan a bit strict with Public Domain? Not familiar with the rights of Godzilla at all, would love to read about it from someone who knows. I'm guessing Japan would go hard with trademark law.

So what legitimate proof do they have there were any profits made in the US?

You can easily get analytics from where in the world people viewed/got your content from. You can just filter out the US IPs and block those and restrict those customers I guess.

Sure some people could use VPNs to bypass that but that might not be considered the problem of the content creator. Not like the average person would actually do this so it'd be a small percentage regardless.