Question on Character Name, possible copyright.

[Five_Inch_Heels]

I picked up a story bunny about a witch. I like the name Agatha Cromwell for a witch.

The name is a Disney character from their Halloweentown series and was played by Debbie Reynolds.

I would be using the name only without any other reference to the series or their story line. The only similarity would be that she's a very old witch.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Not the expert, but I think at worst, it would fall under fan fiction. You're probably ok.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Names aren't protected by copyright. They could be covered by a trademark but if you're not selling the work that's not an issue.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I've accidentally used a name that I found out was also used for a character in a novel. It's a bit obscure, and I doubt Scepter Books in the U.K. is ever going to notice it, or care. I doubt that even Disney will notice a name from a series more than twenty years old.

 

[RetroFan]

I've often wondered this myself. For example, if there was a sitcom about two college girls in a soriety called Samantha and Sabrina and it is set entirely in the real world, there would be no issue there. But if it was a fantasy sitcom and the two girls secretly had magical powers, then this might cause a problem given the obvious association with famous fictional witches with these names in existing IP's.

As for trademark characters I'm not sure there either. Obviously a clown entertainer who performs at kids' parties couldn't call himself 'Ronald McDonald' for his act; but if I wrote a comedic story set in the 1980s where a humourless high school principal is named Ronald McDonald and this leads to no end of trouble, could McDonalds and their legal eagles take a dim view of it? Likewise the late Colonel Sanders is a trademark of KFC, so would it be a problem to write a story set during World War II where the promiscuous daughter of an army colonel is having lots of fun with the GI's in basic training, and the strict, stern military man in charge of the base who has no idea what his darling daughter is up to is named Colonel Sanders?

 

[ElectricBlue]

I picked up a story bunny about a witch. I like the name Agatha Cromwell for a witch. The name is a Disney character from their Halloweentown series and was played by Debbie Reynolds. I would be using the name only without any other reference to the series or their story line. The only similarity would be that she's a very old witch.

I picked up a story bunny about a witch. I like the name Agatha Cromwell for a witch. The name is a Disney character from their Halloweentown series and was played by Debbie Reynolds. I would be using the name only without any other reference to the series or their story line. The only similarity would be that she's a very old witch.

Names aren't protected by copyright. They could be covered by a trademark but if you're not selling the work that's not an issue.

It's also a real person's name, based on a quick Google search.

Don't worry about it - your story might get classified here as Fan-fiction (which was the rest of the Google first page), but no-one can stop you using a name like this. They're common first names and surnames.

 

[RetroFan]

I've accidentally used a name that I found out was also used for a character in a novel. It's a bit obscure, and I doubt Scepter Books in the U.K. is ever going to notice it, or care. I doubt that even Disney will notice a name from a series more than twenty years old.

I had a similar experience once when writing a scene in one of my stories some years ago, where an abusive husband/father doesn't like his dinner and instead ends up eating dog food. At the time I wrote the story I had never read the book or seen the film of 'Prince of Tides' where there is a similar scene where this happens. There are however significant differences, in Prince of Tides the wife secretly feeds the husband dog food under the guise of it being beef hash; while in mine the husband doesn't like his meatloaf which he feeds to the dog, and prepares and willingly eats the dog food himself.

 

[Kitty_so_frisky]

If you just want to use the name and not the character, just have your very old witch character brush it off while being introduced, like “no, not that Agatha Cromwell, but I appreciate you mistaking me for someone 200 years younger!”

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

If you just want to use the name and not the character, just have your very old witch character brush it off while being introduced, like “no, not that Agatha Cromwell, but I appreciate you mistaking me for someone 200 years younger!”

That's one of the clinkers. An opening line will be something like, 'no one could tell by looking at me that I'm over two hundred years old.'

The concept is a cross between an anti-aging potion and almost a sort of vampire type theme where her secret is that she needs the vaginal or seminal secretions to young adults to stay beautiful.

Witch, but not the Disney type witch of the story.

I just like the name is all.

 

[SimonDoom]

Names aren't protected by copyright.

If you write an incest story featuring a middle-aged milkman named Harry Potter, you don't have a copyright problem. You are free to do that. It only becomes a potential problem when the name+character closely resembles a character in a copyrighted work. If the milkman has glasses, a scar, a wand, an owl, and a giant friend named Hagrid, then maybe you have a problem.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

Hmmmm, maybe Agatha Nightingale.



That mixes in Hallmark's Good Witch (Catherine Bell) and takes on a notion of a friendly and attractive, but slightly mysterious person blending into a community.

 

[soflabbwlvr]

A few years back I wrote a story with a character named Shirley Johnson -- both names very common and intentionally so. I reader wrote and asked how I knew Shirley Johnson? She said that she had a co-worker named Shirley Johnson, and I had nailed her personality and demeanor perfectly. It took some effort to convince her this was pure coincidence and not based on her co-worker. I know this is only tangentially related to the OP, but it goes to show name repetition is common and if you write enough stories, you will eventually use a an already in-use name.

 

[Carnevil9]

If you search all movies, TV shows, and prose fiction published over the last fifty years, you would probably find ANY name has already been used somewhere. Unless you are making up some outlandish sci-fi kind of name, that is.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

I don't think I have the imagination to make this work out well. Maybe if somebody wanted to take it on?


A young and vivacious woman moves to town.


Things begin to happen as she spreads her influence. Somehow, people become more attractive and interested in erotic things.

Everybody gets in on the action and the town become a bastion of horniness.

It eventually comes out that she's a witch and has cast some sort of spell because she needs the intimate secretions of younger adults to keep her looking younger than her 300 or so years.

Buit no bad or evil. She's a good and sensuous witch and gets people to do things willingly, not by dark forces.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

I don't think I have the imagination to make this work out well. Maybe if somebody wanted to take it on?


A young and vivacious woman moves to town.


Things begin to happen as she spreads her influence. Somehow, people become more attractive and interested in erotic things.

Everybody gets in on the action and the town become a bastion of horniness.

It eventually comes out that she's a witch and has cast some sort of spell because she needs the intimate secretions of younger adults to keep her looking younger than her 300 or so years.

Buit no bad or evil. She's a good and sensuous witch and gets people to do things willingly, not by dark forces.

I'm going to call you on that. Just they way you've laid out this idea tells me you can do it.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

She buys an old family farm that has one very large early 1900's farmhouse. The kind that had enough rooms for two or three generations of family and looks kind of creepy. A couple of kitchens and a few fireplaces with creepiy old chimneys everywhere. She hires local contractros which brings her in contact with young guys. Maybe she throws parties or picnics for the work crews which brings in their wives. Then women's events like book and garden clubs. She tells them she's in her 50s and they can't believe it since she looks in her 30s, so they ask her to share health and beauty tips. That's where the potions begin to come into play. The wives start looking better which makes the guys want to try to look more fit. It gets almost competitive, each trying to outdo the other.

She is able to seduce several of both.

Over time she has a few more houses built on the property and 'selects' some of her favorites of the townspeople to move in. They don't know that she's building a new coven like she has before over the centuries.