Batman forever? For several decades, the knight in the cloak has been the most popular character of series and video games

Over the past forty years, Batman, Dracula and Spider-Man have topped the list of the most popular movie and video game characters in the world's largest media market –stated the first edition of a new series of WIPO Creative Economy Notes, presented by WIPO Director General Daren Tang in the framework of the Frankfurt Book Fair.

The publication “Batman forever? Effect of overlapping trademark and copyright frameworks on the franchising of comic characters” focuses on the use of comic and other characters in the film and video game industries of the United States of America in 1980–2019. (The top 40 is cited here)

The authors analyzed how the right holder of the character can resort to registering it as a trademark, not limited to copyright protection (usually used to protect the creativity results), and what it means from an economic and conceptual perspective. Thus, according to the WIPO by, the income received during this period from the use of the three mentioned characters amounted to about $ 5.89 billion.

Based on the WIPO materials.