The return of Valiant Comics!?

[Phoenix8008]

Valiant IP fight over

The trademark intellectual property fight between Valiant Entertainment and Valiant Intellectual Properties that has continued for two years in the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board and in Federal Court is now over with Valiant Entertainment owning all Valiant-related trademarks, including Valiant Intellectual Properties-filed trademark applications.

The conflict began soon after Valiant Entertainment acquired all rights to the Valiant Comics library of characters from videogame publisher Acclaim Entertainment’s estate in June 2005. It was discovered that during the sale to Valiant Entertainment a newly formed company called Valiant Intellectual Properties LLC (VIP) had filed intent-to-use trademark applications for certain Valiant-related trademarks that were owned but not correctly renewed by Acclaim’s estate. These Valiant-related intent-to-use trademark applications included Valiant, Harbinger, Eternal Warrior, Rai and the Future Force, Quantum & Woody, Outcast, Dr. Mirage, The Visitor, Ninjak, Deathmate, Bloodshot, Punx, and Secret Weapons.

Valiant Entertainment filed oppositions to these VIP-filed trademark applications in the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. However, the process can take years to reach fruition and prevented the distribution by Diamond Comics Distributors of Valiant Entertainment’s highly-anticipated Harbinger: The Beginning hardcover collection featuring a new story by Jim Shooter. The hardcover collection was subsequently distributed by Valiant Entertainment directly to retailers.

During this time, VIP released an ashcan at the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con containing recognizable Valiant trademarks, such as Harbinger and Eternal Warrior, alongside completely unrecognizable character sketches. Despite trying to circumvent Valiant Entertainment’s copyrights, VIP’s attempted use of Valiant-related trademarks in an effort to strengthen their applications enabled Valiant Entertainment to file a lawsuit on August 29 against VIP in the Southern District of New York Federal Court for trademark infringement, unfair competition, false designation of origin, false description, and false representation. Last month, a settlement agreement was reached between the parties.

“The lawsuit Valiant Entertainment filed to protects its intellectual property against VIP LLC has been resolved to Valiant Entertainment’s satisfaction. Valiant Entertainment owns all copyrights and trademarks to the Valiant and Acclaim characters, including all right, title, interest, and associated goodwill to the VIP-filed trademark applications,” said Jason Kothari, CEO of Valiant Entertainment.

He added, “I would like to thank the loyal Valiant fans for their continued support and Blank Rome LLP for their outstanding work.”

Valiant Entertainment’s HARBINGER: THE BEGINNING hardcover collection featuring a new “Origin of Harada” story by comics’ legend Jim Shooter is being resolicited in the February 2008 issue of Diamond’s Previews.

Valiant Entertainment’s X-O MANOWAR: BIRTH hardcover collection featuring a new “The Rise of Lydia” story by Valiant co-architect Bob Layton and a new cover by Sean Chen is being solicited in the February 2008 issue of Diamond’s Previews and will be in stores in April 2008.

About Valiant Entertainment

Valiant Entertainment is a character-based entertainment company that owns and manages some of the most popular comic characters ever created across all media, including feature films, television, video games, new media, publishing, and consumer products. Since their creation in 1990, Valiant characters have sold 80 million comic books, 8 million video games, and Valiant became one of the three leading comic character-based companies globally. In addition, the “Valiant characters are often called the most important characters created since the Marvel revolution of the 1960s” (Sequart, 2006). VALIANT™ characters include X-O MANOWAR®, BLOODSHOT®, HARBINGER™, ETERNAL WARRIOR™, DOCTOR MIRAGE™, NINJAK™, SHADOWMAN®, RAI™, and QUANTUM & WOODY™, among many others. Visit ValiantEntertainment.com for more information.

So the legal entanglements are now out of the way. The only questions now are when will we see the return of some of these great characters in new ongoing comics, and what form that return will take.

Meanwhile, in news appearently unrelated to the end of the legal strugles, an animated Turok movie looks to be in the works and (according to IMDB.com at least) scheduled for release February 5th of this year.

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Here's one person hoping that Valiant comics can rise again and show Marvel and DC how to do things right!

 

[Cthulhudrew]

So long as Christopher Priest and MD Bright get to write Quantum & Woody again (or get some kind of rights to the characters), I'll be happy.

 

[Mistwell]

If they would bring Jim Shooter back, all would be well

 

[Phoenix8008]

I agree with you there, Mistwell. Who knows, maybe there's hope. He just recently got back into comics for the first time in years. As of September Wikipedia says he was made the writer on Legion of Superheroes again after a 30 year absence. Maybe it's time to bring back Valiant and the New Universe. Marvel's reboot of that Jim Shooter idea seems to have frozen after 6 issues unfortunately.

 

[Felon]

I missed out on Valiant. And from what I've heard, that was my loss. Hey, maybe they'll take a cue from Marvel and put those back issues online.

 

[JoeGKushner]

But how likely is it that Valiant IP still includes things like Solar, Magnus and Turok?

 

[Rykion]

But how likely is it that Valiant IP still includes things like Solar, Magnus and Turok?

According to wikipedia the rights to Solar and Magnus are held by Random House. The rights to Turok seem to be held by a company called Classic Media.

 

[Mistwell]

I missed out on Valiant. And from what I've heard, that was my loss. Hey, maybe they'll take a cue from Marvel and put those back issues online.

Actually I am probably going to put the entire company's worth of issues on e-bay I bought duplicates of most of it.

 

[Phoenix8008]

Actually I am probably going to put the entire company's worth of issues on e-bay I bought duplicates of most of it.

Aargh. I used to have them all many years ago. But lost all of them during a interstate move when leaving the military. I've recently started to try and build that whole set again. So far I have 17 whole issues. But if your gonna sell 'em, you might wait a bit till the new stuff starts really coming back out. Might raise the prices that you'll be able to sell them for due to higher interest.

On the bright side, I found a wonderful new site for lovers of Valiant comics: www.valiantcomics.com
They have a nice messageboard there too that is for Valiant fans what ENworld is for D&D fans. Nobody there has been able to say yet about the rights for Magnus/Solar/Turok. Everyone agrees though that Valiant wouldn't be the same without them. Hopefully they will purchase the rights from whoever owns them now (at least the rights to make comics of them) if they haven't already. Since they bought their way out of court, hopefully they have enough money left to do this and still start up some new comics.

Also there is now a countdown timer going to mark the launch on Feb 15th of the new Valient Entertainment website. And if you click on the link at the top of the page (reproduced here) you can see a teaser for the 2 hardcover graphic novels coming out in April! One for Harbinger and one for X-O Manowar! (The Harbinger one has already been on the market for a few months, but due to the legal issues they couldn't offer it through Diamond Comic Distributors which most stores order their products through. Now that legal issues are resolved, both of these books are in the February issue of Previews for delivery in April.)

The Harbinger book reprints issues #0-7 with a new "Origin of Harada" story written by Jim Shooter himself! The X-O Manowar book reprints issues #0-6 with a new "Rise of Lydia" story by Bob Layton! Each one of them is priced at $24.95.

 

[Sarigar]

This is good news. They had a good run with some great characters and concepts. Betweeen Image and Valiant, I thought Valiant's line was much more compelling and smart. Image was the fanboy flavor at that time, though, and then the legal battles started for Valiant. Whatever they come out with I know I will at least take a look. That's more than I can say for 95% of what is published right now, even though I am still an avid comics fan.