Bill Willingham releases Fables into the public domain as revenge against DC continuously screwing him over

Yeah, it's mildly amusing in that he used all the characters he did in Fables specifically because they were all already in the public domain. For instance, he initially wanted the big villain to be be Peter Pan, but couldn't use him because there were copyright issues (and it's one thing to use a character over wobbly copyright issues with a big corporation, but doing it when the copyright holder is a children's hospital is another thing).

So essentially you can use Willingham's iterations and the situations he created for the Fables series.

I've been calling it the one chad move of a pure chud

Huh that's interesting. How does the rights work. I know Once upon a time, chip n dale have used him as a bad guy. Is it just because Disney's version is differently copy righted ?

It's now public domain in most countries, but in the UK an exception was written into law so that the children's hospital would receive royalties forever.

Fabled debuted in 2002 and copyright mostly expired in 2007, though. Up until that point, Disney seem to have paid to use the characters.

Edited by Mrph1 on Sep 19th 2023 at 9:19:03 AM

Disney's Peter Pan has a note at the beginning thanking the Great Ormond Street Hospital for allowing them to make their film, so I imagine they've got some kind of license from them, or at least they did. The rights outside of the UK have been hazy over the years, which allowed a number of other people to make use of the character. I think Peter Pan is public domain outside of the UK now

Public domain outside the UK, but may involve paying royalties if released in the UK.

And even in the UK, they can't stop anyone from creating Peter Pan adaptations or derivative works now - no creative control, just the payment.

Granted, Peter Pan is the Big Bad in the revival comic.