El Zorro - The Fox

[Chairface]

I am really looking forward to this range. I hope that a few of your other sculpts will make it onto the web store as well.

[Plynkes]

Yes, I think it would be prudent not to refer to it as Zorro at all.

Who brought this Zorro business up anyway? We're talking about Malumute's Californian bandit, not Zorro.

[Malamute]

I am really looking forward to this range. I hope that a few of your other sculpts will make it onto the web store as well.

Any ones in particular?

[Captain Blood]

Who brought this Zorro business up anyway?

Ooops! 

I always understood copyright expired 70 years after the death of the person that 'invented' a given fictional character. Just wondered about... that masked Hispanic avenger...

I had similar troubles a few years ago with the Scarlet Pimpernel... But that's another story 

No such trouble with the works of Dumas and R.L.Stevenson because they are long gone and their many famous creations are well out of copyright and ripe for low-rent plundering by authors of pantos and other cheap and inconsequential stage entertainments...

[Plynkes]

I didn't mean you, it was Malamute himself who put the Z-word in the subject line of this thread. So he can't blame you if Zorro Productions' elite combat lawyers come bursting through his window tonight chucking tear gas and flashbangs about.

[fastolfrus]

I would just sell him as the masked Hidalgo so then they are struggling to lynch onto the zorro part

What Zorro? I am not selling a  Zorro, I am selling a masked bandit

Does anyone know the Spanish for "panda" ?

[white knight]

Just paint him a different colour, a dark red for isntance) when you put him up in the store and call him a masked bandit.

[Chairface]

I am really looking forward to this range. I hope that a few of your other sculpts will make it onto the web store as well.

Any ones in particular?

There is a very cool vampire that I've seen turn up in many forum pics. And a time traveller of some sort....

[Malamute]

I am really looking forward to this range. I hope that a few of your other sculpts will make it onto the web store as well.

Any ones in particular?

There is a very cool vampire that I've seen turn up in many forum pics. And a time traveller of some sort....

Wellyou are in luck as all of those have been cast up, Two Dracula's - One old, one young and a 10th Doctor. If you are interested in them drop me a PM.

[white knight]

Pictures?

[Malamute]

Pictures?

The 10th Dr with a certain consulting detective, discussing the strange case of bodies found drained of their blood:


The chief suspect - An old foreign nobleman:


A young foreign prince recently arrived in London from Europe:


All three are cast up and available if you are interested.

[white knight]

I'm not really into Doctor Who, but the vampires are very tempting.
I'll order them when you get your masked bandit (in banana-coloured costume) out. 

[belteshazzar]

Out of interest, who 'owns' Zorro?
Is he a folk/myth figure, or was he a literary or purely filmic creation?
If the latter, is he out of copyright?

If so, I can feel a 'Zorro - The Panto' coming on... 

I've just read this old discussion thread with great interest, but it seems that this copyright question was never answered definitively, although everyone seemed to decide it was better to back off from using the 'Z' word to avoid a lawsuit from this Zorro Productions company.

(Other figure manufacturers have got around this problem with fictional characters that are definitely still under copyright by getting creative (and humorous!) with the names!)

However, Captain Blood's assumption that the copyright on the original novel by Johnson McCulley has long expired was basically right:

There have been several legal battles launched by this Zorro Productions company, who do have a genuinely close link back to the author of the original author, but their claims are legally baseless and have not stood up in US courts on several occasions.

So, the legal status of the Zorro character is _definitely_ public domain.

Only Sony Productions were gullible enough to take the Zorro Productions claim at face value and pay a licence fee for the Antonio Banderas films!

You can read all about this on the relevant Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorro#Copyright_and_trademark_disputes

P.S.

The same page lists numerous stage productions of Zorro - including a musical, whose producers turned the table on Zorro Productions by claiming that their copyright claim was fraudulent!

Still, no Zorro pantomime as yet, so there may be an opening there!

P.P.S.

A lot of the old Zorro films are also now in the public domain and can now be legally downloaded for free from Archive.org

So, I am currently re-living fond childhood memories of the 1939 serial 'Zorro's Fighting Legion', as broadcast on BBC 2 'Saturday Matinee' as recently the early 1980s along with other brilliant 1930s stuff 'The Rocket Man' and 'Flash Gordon' (with Buster Crabbe), Tarzan films (with Johnny Weissmuller), Harold Lloyd, Laurel & Hardy...

...plus the 1940 Tyrone Power Zorro film, which is probably my favourite, not least because of having Basil Rathbone as the villain!

[Steve F]

However, Captain Blood's assumption that the copyright on the original novel by Johnson McCulley has long expired was basically right:

Most of the legal cases quoted in the Wikipedia article are US ones, and do not necessarily apply in other jurisdictions.  Johnstone McCulley died in 1958.  Copyright in literary works in the EU lasts for 70 years after the death of the author, so his books are still in copyright here until 2028.  But that's a limited protection - literally concerning the right to make copies of the text of the books.  Most of the disputes are about Trademarks: a different form of intellectual property protection involving particular words, phrases, images, sounds or similar concepts (Cadbury recently tried and failed to trademark the colour purple when used in confectionary packaging) that have a commercial value.  Trademark law is much less certain than Copyright law, but if the Zorro trademark were upheld, that would be what would prevent anyone but the rights holders from making up and marketing  their own Zorro novels and films.

[Admiral Benbow]

Folks, this topic is 8 years old. I don't think we really need a discussion about different jurisdictions now. So this topic is now closed.