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Wednesday whimsy

By Johanna Gibson, David Pearce, Jeremy Phillips and Ilanah Simon.

There's just one whimsy today. The IPKat is thinking of compiling a useful list of fictional villains (especially those currently lurking in the public domain) who have not yet been appropriated by IP owners and may thus be successfully merchandised by enterprising entrepreneurs. There are precedents for this: the Kat guesses that exploitation of Flashman was far more lucrative than the income from Tom Brown's Schooldays. Following a briefly tweeted duet with fellow blogger Aurelia J. Schultz, the IPKat can offer three villains to start the ball rolling:

* The IPKat's favourite (sic), Count Fosco (Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White), of whom a contemporary reviewer wrote, in 1862, "No villain of the century, so far as we are aware, comes within a hundred miles of him: he is more real, more genuine, more Italian even, in his fatness and size, in his love of pets and pastry, than the whole array of conventional Italian villains, elegant and subtle, whom we are accustomed to meet in literature";

* Lord Henry Wotton (Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray);

* Javert (Victor Hugo, Les Misérables), the self-righteous persecutor of Jean Valjean -- an unhappy soul who was, it seems, never given a first name.

The IPKas has no doubt that readers will wish to add some villains of their own. Please don't nominate members of the judiciary past and present (their judgments might read like fiction, but the judges are real) or senior administrators and office holders with international and European IP institutions ...

Full post as published by IPKat on September 01, 2010 (boomark / email).