What does 2033 mean?

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Superman is also a trademark.Trademarks work way differently.

Anyway I don't think DC would spend so much money and time promoting characters they will lose so...

They'll milk it till they can. And it being public domain doesn't mean they can't write Superman comics, it just means that other people can too.

I'll be honest... I expected a full explanation about what's going to happen from you :/ You let me down

I am bored to explain a complicated matter like that, do your own research :P

But if you want some more details think that most of Superman's items, his logo, his series, his villains,his title and all that are Trademarked. Trademarks don't enter public domain.

So if Superman enters public domain, DC will still be the sole place to find the "true Superman". The others will only look like homages.

I don't think you have anything to worry about, and you can thank Disney for that, because years ago they had the same problem with Mickey Mouse scheduled to enter the public domain in 2003 and they stopped that from happening by throwing a end-of-days arsenal of lawyers at it; Bill Clinton himself signed the bill that kept the Mouse in their clubhouse. Copyright term extensions happen all the time. A couple of centuries ago, terms only lasted about 20 years; today, they can last for over a hundred. There are just too many powerful interests running around to allow it to ever happen --- not just Warner, but the MPAA, RIAA, Songwriters' Guild and a dozen other bodies will fight like madmen against copyright lapses.

Mm, didn't know about the Mickey Mouse issue. Can't say I am surprised.

SOme sites even said that the Superman that will enter PD is the one from the original Action COmics. Which wouldn't just mean his villains and most of his lore wouldn't be in PD, but that Superman will not be able to fly or use any of the other powers he had.

God Bless America

They are correct as far as I know. The only other character available will be Lois who appeared in AC 1 too. Even Luthor will take a few years more to became PD. The powers thing though is incorrect, they can change them if they want.

IDK, When it came to some Disney movies that have PD stories, it said you can use the original book but you can't do anything that Disney did differently. That's what I heard

Sherlock Holmes is PD but he gets a new iteration every year, so I don't thing that's true.

Here's how I see it works. If you wanted to just do the movie on the big screen, you can. And so can someone else. Your movies would be almost identical and even have the same lines. But if lets say I made Sherlock Holmes a Ninja who plays Guitar, the other studio can't do that. So yes, there are mulitiple Sherlock movies/shows. But anything that makes them different is not copied by the other. Examples would be there was a cartoon about Holmes in the future with a robot Watson and now there is hat BBC show that takes place in the modern day.

I think anything build on PD is automatically copyrighted by the creator. And then that has to became PD too for others to use.

But that doesn't negate the fact that you can still change Superman's powers just make them a tad different. Like how homage characters do.

A question I was gonna ask you @sog7dc. How do you feel about this as someone who also aspires to be a Superman writer?

I'm sure you can give him new powers. BUt I don't think flight or heat vision are them. You could probably make him stronger and faster though.

You can, you just have to add, rename or remove some to make the overall look different by that logic. The lines are unclear here. Remove Freeze breath and rename HV to Kryptonian vision and suddenly you have a new powerset :P Its very simple really.

I suppose that's one way. Honestly this is all just speculation and I'm hazy on the whole Disney thing. I'll ask my sister 13 years from now when she finally becomes a lawyer.

@saintwildcard:

I did t even know about it til now. And to be honest, I don't really have strong feelings about it. :/

I doubt this scenario will ever come to pass for the reasons Saren has already elaborated on earlier in this thread. Despite DC being obsessed with Bat Mania for the past 10+ years, they would never let Superman slip out of their legal clause into the public domain, losing their second most popular and most iconic character that their company was based on would be disastrous financially and publically for DC. We can thank the lawyers, corporate sharks and money obsessed execs for that unfortunately, Superman will still be profitable for them by 2033 I think and if an asset makes profit, the lawyers will make loopholes in the bills to keep Superman at DC.

Plus, there have already been plenty of Superman homages in all forms of media like Hyperion, Hancock, Mighty Mouse, One Punch Man and loads more since Superman's creation. True Superman's exact origin and powers would be up for grabs for anyone to use freely but if Superman stays at DC, there'll still be pastiches, parodies and characters clearly inspired by Superman regardless of whether he's in the public domain.

@saintwildcard:

To put it quite simply, it means good and bad news.

Good because it might allow other skillful teams to write their stories about Superman that otherwise they'd never be able to. And there are very good teams out there. Writing really good stuff but that otherwise will most likely never play in the big leagues, like DC Comics.

And bad, because has there are good teams there's also the reverse, but this is the lesser problem. After all if a team is weak people will simply not read anything they release. The main problem will most likely be, overproduction. There would be comics coming out left and right, each depicting their own version of Superman, there would be little to no cohesion. Hell, DC Comics holds most of the rights and even they can't seem to wrap their heads in a single unison "vision" of Superman.

I'd like to point that going public domain won't instantly kill off a character. Most Disney characters are public domain. The Wizard of Oz is public domain. So, no big deal.