Page "Comic strip" Paragraph 56

Since the dawn of comic strips, the ownership of them has been a recurrent issue.

Traditionally, the syndicate owned the rights to the strips.

However, throughout history there have been exceptions, with Mutt and Jeff being an early ( if not the earliest ) case in which the creator owned his works.

However this was later limited to adaptations of animated properties.

When it started in 1970, the Universal Press Syndicate gave cartoonists a 50-percent share on the ownership of their works, while the Creators Syndicate ( founded in 1987 ) granted artists full rights to the strips, something that Universal Press did in 1990. followed by King Features in 1995, while before 1999 both the Tribune and United Feature services began granting rights to creators over their works ; however the latter three syndicates only applied this to new strips, or to ones popular enough.