Advice Requested re. Creature Copyright

[Vovina]

For the last year, I have been working on a Malleus Monstrorum-style bestiary dossier for an original eldritch god that I came up with some years ago, with the intent of publishing and selling it on the DriveThru RPG website. One of the ideas I had was for its blood to be mutagenic, transforming the people and creatures exposed to it into more monstrous forms, and I came up with statblocks and commissioned art for mutated versions of humans and several of the more iconic Cthulhu Mythos monsters, namely Deep Ones, Ghouls, Star-Spawn of Cthulhu, and Dark Young; being under the impression that they were in the public domain due to having seen them appear in other non-affiliated media without noticing any accreditation of ownership.

However, I recently discovered that many of the more popular creatures of the Mythos — Yog-Sothoth, Mi-Go, Shoggoths, Elder Things, Star-Spawn, and Dark Young, to name a few — are still under copyright, which has left me with a dilemma: do I rework the parts that may be contentious from a copyright standpoint so that I can still use them (something I've seen some of the aforementioned non-affiliated media do) even if it doesn’t fit what I was going for, or err on the side of caution and completely excise them even if that means the time and money I invested was wasted?

I would like to be able to ask permission to use these elements, but the copyright status of the Cthulhu Mythos is a notoriously convoluted subject so I'm at a total loss as to where to even begin doing so.

Edited July 6, 2023 by Vovina
Adding additional clarification.

[Numtini]

On 7/3/2023 at 5:11 PM, Vovina said:

However, I recently discovered that many of the more popular creatures of the Mythos — Yog-Sothoth, Mi-Go, Shoggoths, Elder Things, Star-Spawn, and Dark Young, to name a few — are still under copyright

Dark Young are a creation of Chaosium. Shug Niggurath has a Thousand Young, but not Dark Young, and the specific description is Chaosium.

Yog Sothoth, Mi-Go, Elder Things, and Shoggoths all appear in Lovecraft's out-of-copyright writing. There's not much detail about Yog Sothoth though, so pulling up a description from elsewhere is problematic. The others are pretty well described in the text.

If someone really wants to see what is and isn't part of Lovecraft's original work, the best way is to get a kindle version of Lovecraft's complete works (99cents usually because they're out of copyright) and load it on the PC/Mac version of the kindle software which has an excellent search function. Use only what you find in the actual Lovecraft material. Just because it names a critter, doesn't mean you can then go back to a game book and use the full description from there.

I also highly recommend the Harms encyclopedia which covers all the various creatures and where their origins are. It will tell you, for example, that Elder Things and Old Ones are both terms for the same creatures in Lovecraft's At The Mountains Of Madness, but Chaosium uses Elder Things exclusively for that creature to differentiate them from Old Ones. Or that Byakhee the term is an invention of Derleth, but the creature described in the Chaosium books is from Lovecraft's The Festival.

[Vovina]

Thank-you for the reply. I only recently learned that the Dark Young were created by Sandy Petersen — the Lovecraft wiki says they first appeared as "Shoggoths" in Robert Bloch's 1951 "Notebook Found In a Deserted House" and I don't recall their appearance in the Overlord light novel/manga/anime assigning any accreditation of ownership, which makes me wonder if Kugane Maruyama also assumed they were in the public domain.

I was informed that Yog-Sothoth was not in the public domain due to having first appeared in a story Lovecraft wrote in 1927 but which was first published in 1941, which I suppose would technically make his first appearance being mentioned in a 1929 story, and assumed that the Mi-Go, Elder Things, Shoggoths, and Star-Spawn are also not yet in the public domain due to also having debuted in stories published after the current copyright cutoff date of January 1, 1928.

Edited July 7, 2023 by Vovina

[Numtini]

1 hour ago, Vovina said:

I was informed that Yog-Sothoth was not in the public domain due to having first appeared in a story Lovecraft wrote in 1927 but which was first published in 1941, which I suppose would technically make his first appearance being mentioned in a 1929 story, and assumed that the Mi-Go, Elder Things, Shoggoths, and Star-Spawn are also not yet in the public domain due to also having debuted in stories published after the current copyright cutoff date of January 1, 1928.

That current copyright cutoff date is for works that renewed their copyrights after the initial 28 year term. For many years Arkham House insisted that the copyrights had been renewed and were owned by Arkham House, but no evidence of this has ever been found, including third parties working with the US Copyright Office. Further, since Arkham House has more or less collapsed, people have gone ahead and published these stories directly, much less used them as inspiration, and no action has been taken. It is generally understood that Lovecraft's original works were never renewed and are therefore in the public domain. That is not the case with many of his collaborations, many of which had the copyrights renewed by the coauthor. I can't remember which one, but there's one family that holds onto them with an iron grip and requests a fortune for any reprint rights, making them effectively unavailable--I'm reminded of the advice "don't hold onto it so long that nobody wants it anymore."

I can find no reference to Star Spawn in Lovecraft's writings, at least by that term. 

[Vovina]

1 hour ago, Numtini said:

I can find no reference to Star Spawn in Lovecraft's writings, at least by that term. 

As far as I can tell, they are first mentioned in At the Mountains of Madness as "a land race of beings shaped like octopi and probably corresponding to the fabulous prehuman spawn of Cthulhu". Lovecraft called them "Cthulhu spawn" and "cosmic octopi", Brian Lumley gave them the name "Cthulhi", and the The Real Ghostbusters cartoon called them "Shuggoths", but I'm not quite sure where the term "Star Spawn" comes from — that could be an invention of Chaosium, since it's what the Malleus Monstrorum calls them.

2 hours ago, Numtini said:

That current copyright cutoff date is for works that renewed their copyrights after the initial 28 year term. For many years Arkham House insisted that the copyrights had been renewed and were owned by Arkham House, but no evidence of this has ever been found, including third parties working with the US Copyright Office. Further, since Arkham House has more or less collapsed, people have gone ahead and published these stories directly, much less used them as inspiration, and no action has been taken. It is generally understood that Lovecraft's original works were never renewed and are therefore in the public domain. That is not the case with many of his collaborations, many of which had the copyrights renewed by the coauthor. I can't remember which one, but there's one family that holds onto them with an iron grip and requests a fortune for any reprint rights, making them effectively unavailable--I'm reminded of the advice "don't hold onto it so long that nobody wants it anymore."

Hmm. In that case I may as well just replace the Dark Young with Shoggoths and/or Mi-Go rather than risk upsetting Mr. Petersen. 

[Vellcrow]

As mentioned above, The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia by Daniel Harms is what you seek.  Anyone writing something about the Mythos should own this book.

I also found this helpful:  https://cthulhureborn.wordpress.com/2019/06/29/the-safewords-of-cthulhu/

 

[Vovina]

4 hours ago, Vellcrow said:

As mentioned above, The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia by Daniel Harms is what you seek.  Anyone writing something about the Mythos should own this book.

I also found this helpful:  https://cthulhureborn.wordpress.com/2019/06/29/the-safewords-of-cthulhu/

 

I'll have to check those out. Thanks for the recommendations.

[Vovina]

Hmm. I inquired about it on a Call of Cthulhu TTRPG-focused Discord channel and one of the users mentioned that as long as I publish it as a supplement for the Call of Cthulhu TTRPG via the Miskatonic Repository — which was my intent to begin with — I should be able to use the Dark Young. Is this correct or not?

[Nick Brooke]

12 minutes ago, Vovina said:

Hmm. I inquired about it on a Call of Cthulhu TTRPG-focused Discord channel and one of the users mentioned that as long as I publish it as a supplement for the Call of Cthulhu TTRPG via the Miskatonic Repository — which was my intent to begin with — I should be able to use the Dark Young. Is this correct or not?

Of course you can use Chaosium’s IP in Chaosium’s community content programme. That’s how it’s supposed to work.

[Vovina]

On 7/7/2023 at 11:13 AM, Numtini said:

[...] since Arkham House has more or less collapsed, people have gone ahead and published these stories directly, much less used them as inspiration, and no action has been taken. It is generally understood that Lovecraft's original works were never renewed and are therefore in the public domain.

I checked with the person who first told me Yog-Sothoth is not in the public domain, and apparently there's been cases where Arkham House has stepped in and requested Yog-Sothoth not be used due to the story he first appears in not being out of copyright.

 

[Numtini]

18 hours ago, Vovina said:

I checked with the person who first told me Yog-Sothoth is not in the public domain, and apparently there's been cases where Arkham House has stepped in and requested Yog-Sothoth not be used due to the story he first appears in not being out of copyright.

You can't go wrong by being overly cautious, but I'm extremely skeptical of a heresay report. There's dozens of full Lovecraft collected works published on the basis of his work being out of copyright. Not just ebooks cutting and pasting the material from Project Gutenberg, but real publishers with nice hardcover editions. There's also the plethora of games that reference Yog-Sothoth without license, again, not receiving any C&Ds from Arkham.

[Vovina]

Finally got my hands on the The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia, and I'm mildly surprised that it — like the Lovecraft wiki — attributes the creator-ship of the Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath to Robert Bloch in "Notebook Found in a Deserted House", though it notes that he called them "shoggoths". Meanwhile, Sandy Petersen's role is relegated to a citation for the 5th edition of the Call of Cthulhu Rulebook.

Edited July 14, 2023 by Vovina

[Numtini]

On 7/13/2023 at 10:30 PM, Vovina said:

Finally got my hands on the The Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia, and I'm mildly surprised that it — like the Lovecraft wiki — attributes the creator-ship of the Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath to Robert Bloch in "Notebook Found in a Deserted House", though it notes that he called them "shoggoths". Meanwhile, Sandy Petersen's role is relegated to a citation for the 5th edition of the Call of Cthulhu Rulebook.

The "Shoggoths" from that story sure seem like the Dark Young from the game to me and are summoned by invoking "Shub Nigger Ath" OTOH I suspect trees coming alive far predates the mythos and is rather obvious. Now, in terms of not infringing on IP, Chaosium is where the term "Dark Young of Shub Niggurath" comes from AFAIK.

[Vovina]

8 hours ago, Numtini said:

The "Shoggoths" from that story sure seem like the Dark Young from the game to me

I've been told that Mr. Petersen has said he used the design of the "Shoggoths" from the short story but came up with the name and lore for them himself, so that tracks.