Copyright protection of fictional characters: is it possible? how far can it go?
The IPKat's favourite fictional character Last year, I was fortunate enough to be invited by Associate Professor Yann Basire (Director-General of CEIPI) to participate in a great (and cool!) conference he organized in Strasbourg on Pop Culture and IP . The topic I was asked to discuss was trade mark protection of fictional characters, and the contribution will be published in 2020 as part of a collection edited by Yann and entitled Propriété Intellectuelle et Pop Culture (LexisNexis, coll. IRPI). But what about copyright protection of fictional characters: is it possible? how far could it go? Copyright protection is available to any work in a Berne and, now, EU sense. While no particular issues arise in relation to the literary, artistic or dramatic works that feature certain characters, in that they are regarded as ‘traditional’ copyright subject matter, whether copyright also vests in fictional characters as such has occ...