Copyright of characters

1909 Copyright Act
Under the 1909 Copyright Act, which was in force until 1978, a fictional character might arguably have achieved copyright protection as a “component part” of a work.

1976 Copyright Act
In the 1976 Copyright Act, Congress did away with separate copyright protection for components of works. Under current U.S. copyright law, copyright protection extends only to “original works of authorship” that are “fixed” in a “tangible medium of expression.”

Graphically depicted characters, unlike literary characters, might qualify separately under the Act’s inclusion of “pictorial, graphic, and sculptural works” in the list of protectable works of authorship. Purely literary characters, however, like other non-tangible concepts found within a literary work, are not independently copyrightable.