Bill Leak allowed to use Tintin imagery

Tue, Jun 5, 2007

Comics and cartoons

Following on from the story the other day that the Australian’s regular editorial cartoonist Bill Leak had been told to stop using a caricature of Tintin to portray the politician Kevin Rudd by Moulinsart SA several sites are now reporting that Leak can indeed depict Rudd as a Tintin-like character (which seems in line with the doctrine of fair use) but he can’t use those cartoons for commercial gain by selling them since he has no deal with Moulinsart who hold the rights and they should be paid a slice of any monies he has made from previous such sales. France 24 quoted Moulinsart’s Mark Rodwell as saying, “We have no problem with him (Leak) using Tintin as a parody in his cartoons in the newspaper but when he starts selling them to the public then it becomes more commercial and he is infringing copyright. He is not permitted to make those sales so we want him to stop doing that and to compensate us for any past sales.”

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  1. Journalista - the news weblog of The Comics Journal » Blog Archive » June 6, 2007: The perfect formulae for the genre Says:
    June 6th, 2007 at 12:20 pm

    [...] So I totally missed the big Bill Leak story while I was sick. Briefly: Leak, a cartoonist for The Australian, has been using a Tintin-like caricature to represent opposition leader Kevin Rudd in his work (and selling prints of the cartoons), only to get nastygrammed by the company managing the rights to Hergé’s famous creation, Moulinsart, who demanded a share of the loot in addition to an immediate cease-and-desist. Anyway, according to a report carried by French TV news outlet France24, Moulinsart has partly backed down; they’re no longer making noises about the caricatures themselves, but insist that Leak not profit from them through the sale of prints, and that he cough up a portion of whatever profits have already been earned. (Right: Leak’s Tintin-esque riff on Kevin Rudd, ©2007 News Limited; France24 link via the Forbidden Planet Blog.) [...]