Under current copyright and trademark laws author/right owner have full control over their creation.
This is however a fairly new phenomenon in ancient Greece (constant retelling of stories and stealing from others creators) as well as in Victorian London (Sherlock Holmes, lots of Sherlock Holmes fics) things were a lot more free.
What if the creators of fictional works only had control about their original work?
So nobody can copy and sell Harry Potter books.
But they could write and sell books about Harry Potter being discovered by Sculley and Mulder from X-Files. There might be TV shows as long as they involve completely original stories.
How could that happen and what would the cultural impact be?
Just to give an example: A nicer, democratic Soviet Union exists to the present day and has those looser copyright laws. People are free to explore and use all kinds of characters, what happens?
This is however a fairly new phenomenon in ancient Greece (constant retelling of stories and stealing from others creators) as well as in Victorian London (Sherlock Holmes, lots of Sherlock Holmes fics) things were a lot more free.
What if the creators of fictional works only had control about their original work?
So nobody can copy and sell Harry Potter books.
But they could write and sell books about Harry Potter being discovered by Sculley and Mulder from X-Files. There might be TV shows as long as they involve completely original stories.
How could that happen and what would the cultural impact be?
Just to give an example: A nicer, democratic Soviet Union exists to the present day and has those looser copyright laws. People are free to explore and use all kinds of characters, what happens?