Yeah; but, since the characters come from public domain folk tales and there has been similar usage of said characters (the Wolf as a private eye/cop, etc) Willingham is likely going to have a hard time selling the idea that his work was that unique and original, in the face of a copycat.  I can cite Warner Bros cartoons, Stan Freberg comedy pieces, other tv, etc that used very similar versions of said characters, which is why I never got that deep into Fables, when it debuted (plus Willingham's previous work had never done much for me).

By a similar token, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen isn't exactly something that Moore can really claim as his own, as he is using public domain figures and pastiches throughout.  His actual stories and depictions of those characters, yes, but not really the concept.  As it is, Phillip Jose Farmer and Michael Moorcock were both doing that sort of thing long before Moore; just not in the manner he did it.  So, even though he and Kevin O'Neil's estate own that property. pretty much anyone can do the same thing, with the same characters even and just call it The Association of Amazing Adventurers and rip it off, whole cloth, provided they don't do a word for word, image for image copy. 

When you are building your thing out of already public domain material, rather than creating it out of whole cloth, you are already in somewhat murky territory, if you get into a dispute with a collaborator or publisher.

If Moore tried to litigate the Watchmen issue, I suspect a sticking point (aside from the wording of the contract) would be the fact that it started out as a project to use the newly acquired Charlton Action Heroes.  The Watchmen variation only came after DC rejected the proposal as too finite and Moore retooled it with pastiches of the Charlton heroes.  That point alone could provide ammo for DC to claim Watchmen was derived from characters they now owned and they commissioned the work.  Then, you have a lot of back and forth about whether the Watchmen characters are unique enough to be considered new.  These fights are usually legal minefields and rarely cut and dried.

I don't like seeing corporations getting away with this kind of stuff; but, it happens too often because the creator involved lets ego trump good sense and they sign deals that set up this kind of thing, rather than try to negotiate better and clearer terms.  Regardless, it is all part of a trend of corporations taking more and more rights for themselves at the expense of individuals and the only real way to fight it is to do something about government that favors corporate entities over citizens.  You need to replace the lawmakers and administrators with people who will uphold the rights of the individual citizens first, and not nebulous entities because of economic power.  It's a Quixotic Crusade, to be sure, against some pretty friggin' big windmills!

This is the heart and soul of the Creators Rights movement of the late 80s that was largely ignored by the talent working in the industry, at a time when they had the collective power to force some change if they had really worked together.  There were enough alternative companies emerging that could have given them more leverage; but, too many top people were happy to make a bit more than stand up and fight for a lot more.  That's a common story in a lot a labor battles.

Not to disagree with most of what you said tonebone, but titles are not copyrighted. There was Snow White and the Huntsman from Universal, Pinocchio from various studios, other Little Mermaid and Alladin movies. You cannot use their take on the characters, but the characters and stories in public domain are fair game.

Unless the copyright laws are changes at the last minute, I'm planning to do my own Superman book. 

I'd buy it!

The funny part is , Superman like most DC books are having a bad time selling. Good luck slam !

Mark Evanier wrote on his blog today about DC management.