> so they have tons of lawyers on retainer to prevent anyone from actually publishing Fables but them
That's not going to be a long court case regardless of how many lawyers they throw at it, since they would have been unable to produce anything showing that they owned the IP that you are allegedly infringing - because they simply didn't own the IP.
This was true before Willingham pulled this stunt. They never owned it, he did. The only one who could have sued would have been Willingham himself.
With this recent event technically everyone owns it (they too), but bringing that up won't help them at all.
Trademarks: I don't think they should have any, given that you can't trademark something you don't own. Searching trademark databases didn't yield anything.
That's not going to be a long court case regardless of how many lawyers they throw at it, since they would have been unable to produce anything showing that they owned the IP that you are allegedly infringing - because they simply didn't own the IP.
This was true before Willingham pulled this stunt. They never owned it, he did. The only one who could have sued would have been Willingham himself.
With this recent event technically everyone owns it (they too), but bringing that up won't help them at all.
Trademarks: I don't think they should have any, given that you can't trademark something you don't own. Searching trademark databases didn't yield anything.