Comments on: PR: What Not to Do: Non-Exclusive Licenses

By: Carol Shepherd

Carol Shepherd — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 22:13:57 +0000

Copyright law is a marvelous work of fiction which allows publishers and writers to serve the cake around before dividing it up, just as at the Mad Hatter’s tea party.

Publishers write exclusive licenses all the time which so narrowly restrict the licensee’s uses, that many other ‘exclusive’ licenses can also be written. Everyone has an exclusive.

No idea here what the actual language of the publisher’s contract is, that’s where the stupid publisher tricks will be found….

Carol Shepherd, Attorney
Arborlaw PLC

By: Nat Gertler

Nat Gertler — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:28:02 +0000

No one may want much overlap, but to be honest, I doubt Dynamite publishing The Phantom would hurt Moonstone much at all. The Phantom hardcore are going to buy the books anyway, and Moonstone has built apparently sufficient audience for their version of the character. If there is some audience who needs x amount of The Phantom per month and will simply choose whichever publisher would best suit their tastes, that would likely be balanced out by the greater additional publicity that Dynamite’s efforts would bring to the character.

By: Tommy Raiko

Tommy Raiko — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:33:57 +0000

Despite Moonstone and Dynamite’s back-and-forth, I’d be more interested to hear a statement from the licensor on this situation. To clarify their thinking on the situation, if nothing else…

By: Johanna

Johanna — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:18:16 +0000

When I was part of DC’s licensed pub department, there were several companies licensed to do (for example) Batman & Robin tie-ins… but they either did different products (coloring books vs. novels) or they had very different audiences (adult novels vs. kids’ chapter books). Nobody wants as much overlap as appears to have happened in this case.

By: John DiBello

John DiBello — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:37:42 +0000

Nat hits it on the head as usual: non-exclusive licenses for popular properties are pretty common. In addition to the examples he states above, consider the fact that DC publishes authorized Batman books. And Del Rey. And Quirk. And DK. And Universe. And Berkley. And Prima. And HarperCollins. Etc.

By: John Platt

John Platt — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:01:43 +0000

Moonstone puts out a damn good product. They deserve more attention, but not for oddities like this.

By: Paul O'Brien

Paul O'Brien — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:02:18 +0000

Hold on… “Moonstone contacted King Features and discovered that neither Moonstone or Dynamite had an exclusive license”?

Do they really mean that? Because it’s the sort of thing I’d rather expect them to clarify when they agreed the licence fee.

By: Journalista - the news weblog of The Comics Journal » Blog Archive » July 15, 2008: A cute talking penis

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:39:03 +0000

[...] Johanna Draper Carlson thinks that Dynamite Entertainment’s Nick Barrucci made a complete ass of himself over the [...]

By: Nat Gertler

Nat Gertler — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 02:42:08 +0000

And there’s really no problem with a non-exclusive license. At the moment, both IDW and Tokyopop have classic Star Trek license. In the past, we’ve seen things like Blackthorne and Marvel having simultaneous Star Wars licenses, or Blackthorne and Comico on Gumby (Blackthorne tended to reach out for the 3-D licenses, which weren’t covered within the exclusivity definition of the other publisher.) Scholastic is selling a lot of Bone, even though Cartoon Books still puts out their own edition. And there have frequently been multiple publishers putting out new collections of Peanuts strips.
You should just be aware of that going in.