Does Warner Bros. "rent out" their characters, or did they miss out on the changes to copyright law?

Asked by RocketSquid (3486

) March 27th, 2010

A while back, Disney lobbied heavily for changes to copyright law to prevent their characters being turned over to public domain. Therefore, you almost never see Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck anywhere unless it’s heavily associated with Disney.
The Warner Brothers characters, on the other hand, seem to be everywhere, be it Looney Toons or not. Things like Road-Runner cable, the mascots at Six flags, and a few others I can’t think of off the top of my head.
What’s the deal here? Where they too late to take advantage of the copyright changes, or is WB selling out the characters for company use? Maybe the WB was bought out and the parent company is handing out the characters to other child companies? Any cartoon buffs know the deal here?

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5 Answers

The changes to copyright law that Disney lobbied for apply to all copyrighted works, including Warner Brothers cartoon characters.

Road Runner is owned by Time-Warner, which is (I believe) the parent company of Warner Brothers. Six Flags has some kind of licensing deal for Warner Brothers characters.

Believe me, no one is using these characters for free. The owners of the copyrights are getting paid.

drdoombot (8145

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@drdoombot- has it right. The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (Yup. That’s what it’s called.) applies to all corporate owned works, not just ~~The Evil Empire of~~ Disney. Under the extension works now have up to 120 years from authorship or 95 years after the works have been published before they become public domain, whichever comes first.

AstroChuck (37666

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Six Flags was originally owned by AOL-Time-Warner. They later sold the brand to Premier Parks, but they retained the licensing agreement for the Warner Bros characters.

MrItty (17411

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