: Re: Are fictional inventions trademarked? I am wondering if I can include fictional inventions like the power suits in Iron Man. I believe that "power-suits" are used legally by a lot of media;

@Gonzalez219

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Read my answer to your question yesterday about copyright. The courts will look at the totality of your work. If they find the work is "substantially similar" then you infringe copyright.

So if your suit is exactly the same, YES, you probably infringe; Iron Man's suit is a product of somebody else's imagination, the way it works and looks is the product of many hours of work and imagination. You cannot steal it!

I am not a lawyer but the way it was explained to me is this: If what you copy already exists in multiple works by more than one author, then it is probably okay to to copy it, because copyright and trademark have to be owned by ONE entity, they cannot be held jointly by multiple owners. So if you find talking rabbits in many books, feel free to write talking rabbits. Bugs Bunny is not the only talking rabbit.

But if what you copy is traceable to one and only one source, then you are likely in violation. So if your power suit looks and works exactly like the fictional Iron Man's power suit, and you cannot find any other fictional power suit in the literature that THEY copied, then leave it alone.

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