Like I can understand why they’d have a trandmark for the character Loki as presented in the MCU, because they own marvel and marvel created that representation, but how can they be shutting down people from selling items depicting the actual norse god from norse mythology, not the disney depiction?
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There’s an old saying; The mouse has more lawyers than animators.
Disney understands that its intellectual property is the most valuable thing they have, and if you don’t vigorously defend it, that sets a precedent that allows artists and other companies to profit off that IP.
A lone artist is hardly a threat to Disney, but Disney is notorious for launching take downs of anything even remotely resembling their Intellectual property. They hire the so called ‘fun police’ people that do nothing all day but to search social media for such potential violations and flag them. The movie and music industries do the exact same thing.
With current DMCA laws sites like RedBubble and Youtube have no choice but to comply. It’s essentially corporate bullying.
Disney knows full well that the artists can’t afford to hire a lawyer, let alone go through the lengthy legal battle to win such a case. So it’s better for the artists to just let it happen.
In many cases, people are playing with fire and are not *quite* far enough away from Disney’s Loki for their merch.
If you’re too close, Disney’s Lawyers can send you a Cease & Desist, and then begin the legal proceedings. They may be wrong, but you’ll have to meet them in court to find out, and odds are your total profits for that product will cover maybe the first hearing.
Better to close up shop and sell the stuff on the DL via Facebook.
If Disney doesn’t defend their copyrights every time they’re aware of an infringement, it can set a precedent that makes it easier for anyone else to infringe on Disney’s territory. After all, if Mom didn’t punish your brother for copying your homework, why is she punishing YOU for it?
If Disney have the copyright for a popular character, to use that character elsewhere you need to be able to demonstrate that it is a separate and distinct character, and not easily confused for the copyright version.
So uses of Loki as the character described in Norse mythology will be fine. On the other hand, uses of Loki as a superhero type character will likely draw instant comparisons to the MCU character, as will depictions featuring the green and gold outfit of Tom Hiddlestons Loki which are more likely to end up with a response from Disney.
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