For example, I was planning on having my character see and have some dialog about a portrait of Conan the Barbarian in one scene. Conan would be a real, but long dead, historical figure in this world.

Is this acceptable or have I crossed the line?
 

And I would bet that in the movie TLOEG they had all the necessary permissions, because if not that would be a very clear violation of intellectual property laws.

[This message has been edited by Christine (edited January 06, 2004).]
 

If the character is from a work that is still copyrighted, then you may have some problems. (I don't think copyright has expired yet on the earliest Conan works.)

If Conan the Barbarian is a historical figure in the world of your story, what you're saying is that the work is set in Conan's universe. As such, your work might be considered a "derivative work," which is therefore a violation of the copyright. Unless you're writing Conan fan-fiction or for an authorized Conan publication, you should probably ditch the reference because other potential publishers might worry about potential legal problems.

The Supreme Court has given special exemption to copyright law to parodies, so using a character in a parody would be permissible if it is parodying that character.
 

The world that I'm building also will have other recognizible characters from history and mythology as "real" historical figures. King Arthur, St. George, Pocohontas, etc.

The story itself isn't intended to be a parody, but I'm striving for a type of humor. I guess I'll just write the scene with the reference with the knowledge that I may have to ditch it later.

Okay. I just did a search on Conan. I was under the mistaken impression that Conan's Cimmeria was the same as the historical Cimmeria. It's not. So, I guess I'll have to tread carefully here.
 

So she is pretty explicitly referring to and even using Jerome's story and characters - her book came out in 1998, his in 1889. Hers is not a parody, though it certainly has comical elements (a section from pages 159-160 had me laughing so hard I had tears streaming down my face and couldn't breathe - haven't had that happen since my first time with Hithchiker's Guide a long time ago!).

I think you are allowed reference such characters, as long as, as you were already told, you don't set your stuff in the Conan universe - but you could do something like it. If all else fails, is there any reason you could not find out from the publisher if you can make such a reference?

Where are the agents who might know such thing???

[This message has been edited by punahougirl84 (edited January 06, 2004).]
 

Isn’t that why League of Extraordinary Gentlemen can use such character as well – they are all from older works in the public domain. (Isn’t the expiration on copyright 70 years after the author’s death – I should probably check that before I post, but I seem to remember it’s something like that).

 

Did I mention I have twins and 1/2 my brains dribbled out my ears during the pregnancy???

Thanks!
 

Conan is the intellectual property of Conan Properties International LLC.

Oh, by the way, all of the characters from the League of Extraordinary Gentlement are expired copyrights. You're safe with any material over 95 years old (in some cases, 75 years or less, check the individual work.)
 

Couldnt you make the characters a lot like the ones your are trying to copy? Like Pokeahountas Conon and make them similar but not the same?

Copyright : You nicked my words!
Intellectual Property : You nicked my story!
Trademark : You nicked my registered name!

This certainly isn't a copyright infringement - "Conan The Barbarian" is not enough text to qualify.

Depending on how much else from the "Conan" world you pull in will depend on whether or not it is an Intellectual Property infringement. There are plenty of examples where other people's characters are mentioned in fiction. Sometimes indirectly, other times less so. Intellectual property cases are fraught and complex - and it seems to me that every one is different.
I think that someone would be unlikely to prosecute or complain if all you had was a moment when someone looked at a picture and was told "That's the great hero Conan.", provided you included nothing else from the Conan universe that is not generic fantasy stuff. (Is there anything in the Conan universe that is not generic fantasy stuff?)

If you were actually to have Conan appear, that would be an entirely different issue.

Trademarks are more complicated still. Trademarking exists to prevent people passing off things as being products of another company - thus you can't produce "Fuji" cameras if you aren't Fuji. When it comes to fiction, you are prevented from calling your work "Conan The Barbarian and the Seven Peach Trees of Lawksabove" because that's passing your story off as an official Conan story. However, there doesn't seem to be much restriction on using trademarked names to refer to products of that company (or even mythical future products of that company), so you could have someone using Windows Longhorn in a story set somewhere around 2015. Indeed, William Gibson used trademarks extensively in Neuromancer. It's perfectly legitimate to have a character using "Sellotape" (tm), rather than forcing them to use "sticky tape", for example.
 

I don't think copyright really applies here. You aren't actually copying anything. (Although note: I am not a lawyer, some lawyers seem to think copyright does apply, hence the fact that they send sometimes send cease & desist letters to people publishing fan fiction citing copyright laws, but my understanding is that this has never been tested in court and is (a) unlikely to ever get that far and (b) would likely fail if it did)

Trademarks are a concern here. But there is an awful lot of ground that can be made in terms of fair usage over a trademark: for instance, Microsoft do not have the right to make me remove their trademark from this post. Only if I was using their name in some way to sell something would they have a case...

In your case, I think it would be OK if the 'borrowed' characters are only incidentally mentioned. If they play a significant role in the story, it could be argued that their identity forms a significant part of the commercial value of the story, at which point you would have to start worrying about trademark issues.

Hope that helps a bit.

[All registered trademarks included above are the property of their owners, which really ought to go without saying, but I thought I ought to mention it...]
 

(By the way, would this be a portrait done of him when he was a king, or just a barbarian?)

The thing that's cool about allusions is that those readers who recognize the object of the allusion feel particularly smart and will like you as an author for helping them feel that way.

Of course, you have to make the allusion interesting and meaningful for those readers who don't recognize the object of the allusion, so allusions are a bit more challenging to writers than merely naming the object (also known as "spoon-feeding the reader").

The real question about whether or not to include anything in a story (and this is from Orson Scott Card) is how crucial that thing is to the story. I've heard him say many times that if something can't fight for the right to be included in a story then maybe you really don't need it there after all. Anything that you don't really, REALLY need should be tossed (especially in short stories).
 

It would be a portrait of Conan the Barbarian. That's important because one of the characters in the scene is commenting about the offensive nature of calling a foreigner a "barbarian."

I suppose I could just as easily use "Bob the Barbarian," but that lacks the comforting pop-culture reference.
 

Marik the Barbarian?

Gront the Barbarian?

Fulgur the Barbarian (fulgur is Latin for lightning, by the way).

Or does this have to be about Conan when he was no longer a barbarian? ("How dare you refer to our mighty king as a barbarian!" sort of thing?)

You could do as Pratchett did, and pun on the name Conan.

Conoco the Barbarian

Gonad the Barbarian

G'won the Barbarian

Geewhiz the Barbarian

<shrug>