Does Karl Bollers own the rights to the characters he created for the Archie comics?

[Leebo4]

Seriously asking as I know about the ken penders issues but I also know that Scott fullop failed to trademark the characters eh created because apparently he waited too long

 

seriously wants to know who owns the rights to Mina mongoose 

[Zaysho]

I believe because Archie couldn't prove Penders didn't own the characters he copyrighted, everything before Flynn's time defaulted to their respective creators, because if Archie couldn't prove Penders had a contract with them that proved Sega's ownership of things in the comic book, then they likely didn't have contracts regarding Bollers, Fulop, et al. either. Kind of hard to say how the rights for those shake out though, since I think only Penders (and maybe Fulop) filed actual copyrights.

[Your Vest Friend]

I think Bollers has said he does own them.

[DabigRG]

He said that he does own them on Twitter, but that Archie was free to use them if they wanted.

[Dr. Detective]

Archie isn't going to use them anymore even if they do have access to them sadly.

We'll never see the characters that Ken owns again either. Not just because they're ugly abominations now but also because he's never going to make his comic. 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Karl Bollers is nice.

He should write for IDW Sonic with Ian Flynn.

But long story short, if the character didn’t survive the Second Genesis Wave of Archie, they’re technically owned by whoever made them.

[MetalSkulkBane]

He probably owns them... unless we count artists probably co-owning characters. And that just one of many reasons why no one will bother returning his characters.

With that said we loose: Mina & family, Finitevus, Nate Morgan, Jack the Rabit, Uma, Hope, Xorda & Bem and few even less important guys.

I think most can agree that only first 2 names are big loss. I liked Nate and Jack, but they replaceable.

[Celestia]

I'm curious about Nate Morgan actually since that's a bit of a unique situation. Technically he was originally created for SatAM, and as far as we know SEGA actually does somehow own the rights to those characters (either that or there just weren't any known issues with whoever does own them). On the other hand, Nate was scrapped during the show's development, so maybe he doesn't count as a SatAM character? My head hurts thinking about this.

But yeah, I imagine Bollers would actually still be cool with his characters still being used. SEGA and/or IDW might not be up for it though, at least at the moment, for the same reasons Archie had as well as uh...fun new reasons.

[GentlemanX]

Nate is probably safe since he's an abandoned SatAM concept, like the word Ixis. But like Ixis which was reworked as a separate character post-reboot versus the title/organization it was pre-reboot, Nate Morgan would probably be brought closer to his SatAM origin, which was a tall wizard instead of a short scientist.

[Zaysho]

Yeah, I imagine Morgan's specific Archie appearance would be off the table if any DiC concepts, used or not, were ever brought back. Naugus I think would just be closer to his rebooted version which doesn't use any of Bollers's developments like the Ixis wizards who all fused together to become Naugus.

 

I personally don't put much stock in Bollers saying he'd be cool with anyone using his characters; I imagine he's nowhere near as difficult to work with as Penders (who wanted to get some control back over Archie Sonic to promote his own work), but Sega wouldn't own those characters and that will eventually become a bigger problem for IDW or anyone else handling Sonic. It'd just be a complete standstill--Sega isn't going to pay royalties or allow a licensee to cut deals like that, nor are they going to buy back anything they don't actually need, and Bollers doesn't really have a reason to give up his rights in full because, frankly, that's stupid. It's nice he's open to it, but it would have been a dead end to me even if Archie didn't get cancelled.