Legal Question in Intellectual Property in New York

Re: Creative freedom towards liscenced items

The basic answer is you can copyright any original literary work. That copyright, however, doesn't extend to someone else's original work or other unlawful material embedded within such literary work and you run a substantial risk that you would be sued for copyright infringement. You can try approaching the owner and ask if you could write the story but in the unlikely event they were okay with it, they'd probably want compensation and/or approval. If you're able to assert a fair use of the characters you'd be able to use the characters but I wouldn't do that without a copyright lawyer's opinion.

Re: Creative freedom towards liscenced items

The story you seem interested in making is what is known as a "derivative work." In context, that means you would be using characters from another story that someone else has already copyrighted. Thus your work would not be completely original - and very likely infringing.

However, this does not preclude you from potentially negotiating with the copyright holders for a sale or license of your work. You just can't publish it outright.

You should contact an attorney for a confidential consultation if you want to proceed further with your work.

NOTE: THIS INFORMATION IS GENERAL IN NATURE AND DOES NOT FORM AN ATTORNEY-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN US.

Re: Creative freedom towards liscenced items

The story you seem interested in making is what is known as a "derivative work." In context, that means you would be using characters from another story that someone else has already copyrighted. Thus your work would not be completely original - and very likely infringing.

However, this does not preclude you from potentially negotiating with the copyright holders for a sale or license of your work. You just can't publish it outright.

You should contact an attorney for a confidential consultation if you want to proceed further with your work.

NOTE: THIS INFORMATION IS GENERAL IN NATURE AND DOES NOT FORM AN ATTORNEY-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN US.