1- Vis PETER PAN- the UK act talks about a compulsory license. Does this mean the hospital MUST give it if requested and paid for? IE, if the author of After the Rain wanted one (and I am not suggesting she needs one) would she HAVE to be given one? and as a subsidiary of this, Sony Pictures is releasing a $100 million dollar Peter Pan this Christmas. Now under your argument, nothing stops me from doing a $2 million dollar horror film version with the characters all over the world because of PD- but if I WANTED to pay for a license to do the horror film, would the hospital HAVE to grant it?
2- vis Tarzan- leaving aside Disney for a second as a possible misread because it is Burroughs that has the Tarzan trademark- with them granting a TV license to WB network and the film rights to Warners even as we speak… but since the first 7 or so books are inarguably PD in the world (are they not? the first Tarzan was published in 1913 and Burroughs died in 1950) the question is if I wanted to say do a huge film in which I use the characters of Jane, Tarzan and Boy exactly as they are portrayed in book one, but call them Lord and Lady Greystoke (assuming no mark exists for that and I doubt there is) can Burroughs Estate stop me legally?

Is there any reason to believe you would not be sued by Disney? No, no reason to believe that at all. In fact, you probably would be sued by D.C. and Disney. People sue all the time when they’re in the wrong, particularly copyright holders. As long as you’ve got a reasonably copyright-literate judge (hopefully not one in the 9th Circuit), you’d win as far as using the original Superman goes. (But remember, the original Superman is significantly different than the modern one . . .) And it is exactly like the “After the Rain” situation, because in both cases the copyright holders would be full of baloney.

Trademarks are trade marks–marks intended to designate origin in trade. When D.C. comics puts the Superman logo on a comic book cover, they want you to see Superman and think, “This book came from D.C. comics and I want to buy comics from them, because they write quality comic books.” This is in stark contrast from the purpose of a copyright, which is to be compensated for the reproduction/distribution/creation of derivatives (at least as far as print copyrights go) of a work. If you put a drawing of, or a story about, the original Superman on the INSIDE of a book, and don’t refer to him on the outside, it’s hard to argue that you used Superman “in trade.” Nobody would know Superman is there until buying the book (or reading it at a library, in which case it wouldn’t be in trade anyway).

Is there any reason to believe you would not be sued by Disney? No, no reason to believe that at all. In fact, you probably would be sued by D.C. and Disney. People sue all the time when they’re in the wrong, particularly copyright holders. As long as you’ve got a reasonably copyright-literate judge (hopefully not one in the 9th Circuit), you’d win as far as using the original Superman goes. (But remember, the original Superman is significantly different than the modern one . . .) And it is exactly like the “After the Rain” situation, because in both cases the copyright holders would be full of baloney.

Trademarks are trade marks–marks intended to designate origin in trade. When D.C. comics puts the Superman logo on a comic book cover, they want you to see Superman and think, “This book came from D.C. comics and I want to buy comics from them, because they write quality comic books.” This is in stark contrast from the purpose of a copyright, which is to be compensated for the reproduction/distribution/creation of derivatives (at least as far as print copyrights go) of a work. If you put a drawing of, or a story about, the original Superman on the INSIDE of a book, and don’t refer to him on the outside, it’s hard to argue that you used Superman “in trade.” Nobody would know Superman is there until buying the book (or reading it at a library, in which case it wouldn’t be in trade anyway).

Does this mean that I could write and sell my own stories featuring Superman and Mickey Mouse in book form? (Assume here we’re talking about text only, so as to avoid the issues of the trademarks of graphics.) Is there any reason to believe that I would NOT be sued by DC Comics and Disney? Aren’t these exactly the issues in the “After the Rain” situation?

I’m unclear on the distinction between use of a character “in trade” and “as a character”.

This way, companies like Disney couldn’t pick up stuff belonging to the Public Trust and then assimilate them.

I guess the ‘public domain’ can be compared to a BSD type license (or an even weaker one), whereas the Public Trust would be a GPL type of license.

Ultimately, law should make the public domain behave precisely like the Public Trust, i.e. once works enter the public domain they can’t be removed or restricted.

Any time a work belonging to the Public Trust was infringed, interested parties could act on its behalf, although, you never know, it might have received sufficient donations to afford the legal services itself.

Interesting thing about the original Superman (the one currently in the public domain), though . . . he couldn’t fly. Hence the “able to leap tall buildings in a single bound” statement. When you think about it, that doesn’t make any sense to say about someone who flies, does it?