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COPYRIGHT PROTECTION TO FICTIONAL CHARACTERS
<!-- EDIT BELOW THIS LINE Copyright protection is available to the creators of a range of works including literary, musical, dramatic and artistic works. Recognition of fictional characters as works eligible for copyright protection is a recent legal development. It has come about with the understanding that characters can be separated from the original works they were embodied in and acquire a new life by featuring in subsequent works.

US LAW: In the United States, in order to avail of copyright protection, a work must be original that is, it must involve an element of creativity, and must be fixed in a tangible medium. Further, there can be no copyright in mere ideas and facts, but only in the unique expression of the same. The US Copyright Statute of 1976 does not explicitly mention fictional characters as subject matter of copyright, and their copyrightability is a product of common law. Historically, the Courts granted copyright protection to characters as parts of larger protected work and not as independent creations. They were regarded as ‘components in a copyrighted works’ and eligible for protection as thus. Recognition of characters as independent works distinct to the plot in which they were embodied came about only in 1930 in the case of Nichols v. Universal Pictures. Following this, the American judiciary has evolved two main tests to determine whether a character in a work can be eligible for copyright protection. Well Delineated Test In Nichols, the Ninth Circuit Court denied protection to the plaintiff’s characters on the grounds that they were not “distinctly delineated”, but poorly developed. The characters of the rich Jewman and the lowly Irish catholic were regarded to be no more than mere ‘prototypes’. Justice Hand held that the less developed the character, the less the copyrightability of the same. Copyright protection shall therefore be enjoyed by a character provided it is well delineated. By applying this test, copyright protection was held to subsist in the character of Tarzan because it was found to be “sufficiently delineated.” Similarly, the character of Superman was held to found to be well delineated by virtue of embodying original literary expressions and incidents, and therefore deserving of copyright.