Copyright Protection for Characters in Transmedia Environment

The proposed article provides an analysis of the legal regime for characters as impacted by the current content creation and dissemination trends with a focus on characters placed in transmedia environment and on the impact of transmedia storytelling on creative work. The author argues current global changes in creative work and different media make it relevant to return to discussions of the main premises of copyright regime for characters. In particular, the author explores a possibility to recognize independent exclusive rights to characters appear in different works of art as well as to those not described in any one of them, and looks into legal importance of characters not described in traditional works of art and literature. The paper raises the issue of exclusive right to characters in complex objects such as audiovisuals or computer games, as well as of the authorship and exclusive ownership of team-created and transmedia characters. The cases of joint authorship of (script) writers and artists as well as implications of creating images of characters existing in literary form as commissioned or allowed by the copyright holder are discussed. The legally important components of characters are explored as well as copyright transferability in the context of media production needs. The paper argues for a need to avoid mixing characters with other copyright objects, first of all works of visual arts including cartoon character sketches.