Felix the Cat?

MarcCCTx

Now that Felix the Cat is in public domain (Bono Copyright Term Extension Act has reached the 20 year mark) can someone legally make a 3d asset that looks like him?

Cybersox

MarcCCTx said:

Now that Felix the Cat is in public domain (Bono Copyright Term Extension Act has reached the 20 year mark) can someone legally make a 3d asset that looks like him?

It's tricky, and the rules vary from country to country.  In the U.S. the copyright on the early films has expired but the TRADEMARKS on the character designs and name are not only still active, but the licencing rights are now held by Dreamworks Animation .  https://www.cartoonbrew.com/classic/dreamworks-buys-95-year-old-felix-the-cat-to-make-him-a-fashion-brand-100564.html ; So while you can arguably use the images that are now in the PD and make free copies of the films or alter them, selling anyting derivative as a Felix product or even calling it Felix is a lot more dicey... Nor can you do anything with the later Felix designs, which are the ones most people are famililar with.  The same kind of legal runaround has kept thje public domain use of Tarzan, whose earliy works have technically been in the public domain for years, under the thumb of ERB INc... because many years ago they trademarked all of the major character names.  

nonesuch00

You could already do that & it's been done countless times already the thing is those people couldn't call those look-a-likes THE 'Felix the Cat'. I'm sort of doubting THE 'Felix the Cat' as a character is in public domain as compared to some old Felix the Cat cartoons and other such old media which is now public domain but look it up and see if it's true!

So I looked at Wikipedia and as you'd think for one of the most well-known cartoon characters in the world, 'Felix the Cat' as a character is now owned by DreamsWorks Animation which is owned by ComCast's NBCUniversal division:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_the_Cat

Mighty Mysterio

Lots of characters sold here and elsewhere are very, very similar-looking to licensed properties from videogames and movies, but they don't cross the line into absolute copyright enfringement. (Felton, for example, looks Muppet-like but is not identical to any Muppet I know of). I don't see any reason why someone couldn't create a posable character whose basic architecture is modeled after the "rubber hose" style and then had various morphs which the user could use to customize the character into something Felix-like.

Given the popularity of the Cupman video game, which uses this style to great effect, I am surprised no one has tried to do this already.