Book Covers and Looney Trademark Rights

D. D. Degg October 9, 2021 1 minute 0 comments

This week, we published a book by the talented Jaime Weinman on the history of the Looney Tunes cartoon franchise, which he considers the high-water mark of American filmed comedy. About six months ago, as the manuscript was being copyedited, we began working on the promotional copy.

At the same time we were writing promo copy, we worked on the book’s cover…

Publisher Ken Whyte explains how this

became this

[We were] warned against using the phrase Looney Tunes and any Warner Brothers cartoon art on the cover. The company has a reputation for enforcing its trademarks, and the phrase Looney Tunes and the images of the cartoon characters are trademarked.

[Author] Jaime [Weinman] and I did enough research to learn that both our proposed Looney Tunes title and the image of Bugs and Daffy were problematic.

Very interesting piece about book cover designing for histories of trademarked characters and phrases.

Anvils, Mallets & Dynamite: The Unauthorized Biography of Looney Tunes on sale now.

Jaime Weinman interviewed.

to Russell Potter and Hogan’s Alley Magazine Facebook page.