For about ten thousand years, humans invented and traded stories that often contained characters and environments they didn't invent. You've heard of some of these characters - Zeus, Persophone, Hades, all recurring characters in stories, mosaics, paintings, statues, carvings. Nobody got sued for it, these characters just functioned as analogues for emotions and elements and conditions, universally recognizable figures that didn't need introduction, they could just be used when you needed e.g. a horny character that liked to change people into animals and then have sex with them.

Just very, very recently we aren't allowed to do this anymore. Despite the fact that Pokemon are a shared cultural experience for millions of people from different countries and languages, an opportunity to have a universal symbolic story telling language across borders of nations and languages, we can't do it because that would harm the ability of a single corporate entity to extract value from it as it sees fit. Never mind that we have our own stories we might want to tell from this shared cultural heritage.

And do we ever have stories to tell! Look at any fan fiction site. Among all the smut you get gems like book 4 of the three body problem, written by a different author than the original. Look at the incredible art created from out of copyright works, like Lies of P for pinnochio or House MD for Sherlock Holmes. I want more of these, for things that were invented in my time!

I wonder if this came with some provision like publishers who didn't actually publish within a certain time after registering a trademark would have their trademarks invalidated.

Currently it sounds like an unfortunate change, in the same way that non-practicing entities are able to get patents and extort money from people who actually make stuff.

[1] (LLM-created "Ashcan Comics!") https://imgur.com/a/gTSvSp2

(Hopefully a like-named comic doesn't already exist, ha ha. Also, seems the LLM thought "trashcan comics"?)

Comics or graphic novels or manga, or however you were introduced to them are becoming the defacto literature for good reason. People work hard to create them. Ashcans are a nice way to ease that burden of getting someone interested.

(https://sweetshop.app if you're interested)