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Creating Comics: Safeguarding Your Creations From IP Theft

By John Freeman on November 9, 2015

Intellectual Property Revolution - Cover

Should comics creators, just like games creators and companies, be taking Intellectual Property law more seriously? The British comics industry may not be as big in monetary terms as the games industry, but perhaps, as creators, we should be thinking along similar lines when protecting the characters we create.

According to Ukie, the trade body for the games and wider interactive entertainment industry, the UK games industry – still a relatively new kid on the block compared with film, TV and comics – was worth over £3.9 billion in consumer spend in 2014 and the sector is expected to grow at an annual rate of eight per cent. 95 per cent of companies are microbusinesses or SMEs – just like many small comics companies – and leading intellectual property (IP) lawyer Shireen Smith, founder of London-based law firm Azrights, thinks that many of these companies could be at risk of losing out as a result of an IP dispute, if they don’t take the necessary steps to protect themselves.

Shireen has recently launched a new book, Intellectual Property Revolution, published by Rethink Press, which is all about how to successfully manage IP assets, protect brands and add value to your business in the digital economy.

Written in plain English, it’s intended as a helpful for business owners and ‘brand guardians’ and may well be of interest to comics creators as well as those in the gaming industry.

“If names are chosen without involving a trade mark expert, the business is at risk of losing out. A poor choice of name can lead to a constant loss of value or difficulty in securing registration either in the UK or in other countries.

“An IP expert should always be consulted at the early stages of launching a new business or product.

“Otherwise, as soon as a new business starts up, the business owner might receive notice that it is infringing on another brand. This can have serious consequences for those that have invested significantly in their branding and search engine optimisation. Sadly for some, they don’t have the time or resources to overcome such a setback.

“Scrabulous was an app, created by two Indian brothers, which allowed people to play a Scrabble-like game online with friends anywhere in the world,” she notes. “It was a huge hit – attracting 600,000 users per day – when in 2008, Hasbro, the owner of the Scrabble trademark, shut it down because their name suggested to the market that this was a similar game to Scrabble. As trademark law helps to prevent piggybacking off the success of others’ brand, Scrabble was able to get Facebook to pull the Scrabulous app even though it was extremely popular.

“The founders had even applied to register a trademark for their name, clearly unaware of the wide scope of protection that trademarks give. Had they taken advice before using the name they would have realised the choice was unwise.

“The fact that their app had gone viral did not stop Facebook from simply removing it. This paved the way for Zynga to create what is now a highly successful app: Words with Friends. The brothers’ advantage of being the first to build a Scrabble-like app on Facebook was lost, and we will never know how big Scrabulous would have been today if it had opted for a better name.”

<br /> • Azrights website: http://azrights.com/ | Azrights on You Tube: https://www.youtube.com/user/Azrights | Azrights on Twitter: @Azrights

John Freeman

The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.

He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.