JoeDios.com Forums - View Single Post - Roadblock is now called Heavy Duty because of a trademark issue

IIRC, Hasbro lost the rights to Lanard for a time. They had to scramble to get the rights back when Lanard let them expire.

From what I understand, there are trademarks for LOTS of aspects. Check this out:

Rights for character name.
Rights for visual character in print
Rights for visual character in movement (Cartoon, movie, live action, etc)
There were 2 others but I can't remember.

Just because you can get back a name like Roadblock, doesn't mean he can have his likeness apparently.

AND I've read/heard that it is incredibly hard to grab 'normal' names. Scarlet, Stalker, etc. That's why, if you guys really bothered to notice (I didn't really care myself) why you got Agent Scarlet, or Ralph "STEELER" whatever, and so on. But anyway...

02-10-2009, 12:35 PM	#17
Sonneilon aka 'Paul WS Anderson' ;) Offline --> Posts: 7,751 --> Join Date: Jul 2005	IIRC, Hasbro lost the rights to Lanard for a time. They had to scramble to get the rights back when Lanard let them expire. From what I understand, there are trademarks for LOTS of aspects. Check this out: Rights for character name. Rights for visual character in print Rights for visual character in movement (Cartoon, movie, live action, etc) There were 2 others but I can't remember. Just because you can get back a name like Roadblock, doesn't mean he can have his likeness apparently. AND I've read/heard that it is incredibly hard to grab 'normal' names. Scarlet, Stalker, etc. That's why, if you guys really bothered to notice (I didn't really care myself) why you got Agent Scarlet, or Ralph "STEELER" whatever, and so on. But anyway...