[m-i-l]

> "Dam’s company ... had filed for a US design copyright back in 1961. And in 1965, it took action in court against a company that it claimed was infringing on its trolls without proper license... The court found that Dam Things had failed to include a copyright mark on hundreds of thousands of trolls it sold. Furthermore, the copyright notice ... was invalid, as it did not explicitly name Dam’s company... Trolls, it was ruled, were in the public domain."

Reminds me of some other stories where inventors lost out:

- James Dewar invented the vacuum flask, but had his design patented by a company called Thermos. He took them to court and "while Dewar was recognised as the inventor, because he did not patent his invention, there was no way to prevent Thermos from using his design"[0].

- Wilkinson Sword introduced stainless steel razor blades in 1962, but a company called Gillette "managed to patent it before Wilkinson did ... [and Wilkinson were] forced to pay royalty to Gillette for each blade it sold"[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Dewar

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillette