By Mark Seavy 

With a number of high-profile properties having recently entered into the public domain and with other classic IPs about to do the same, several companies are working to take advantage of the brands through new content, experiences, and consumer products.  

Elf Labs and Popularium, for example, are two companies in this space displaying very different approaches to the licensing of  brands.  

In both cases, the companies are seeking fresh funding. Elf Labs secured $2 million earlier hsi year and the company recently closed another investment round but hasn’t disclosed how much it raised. 

Elf Labs, renamed from Toon Studios in 2022, has been battling for years in U.S. courts and with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to trademark alternate versions of classic characters, such as zombie versions of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty as part of its Once Upon A Zombie brand.   

It finally gained those trademarks (Elf Labs reports it owns 140 of them) when a USPTO appeals court ruled in 2016 that it could secure them. The company also owns the Junior Elf book portfolio, which it acquired from Checkerboard Press in 2012. That agreement gave Elf Labs access to a former Rand McNally imprint for children’s fables and fairytales.  

“I am a big fan of [studios and trademark owners]. We’re not trying to ruffle any feathers,” Elf Labs CEO David Phillips, son of Toon Studios founder Billy Phillips, told Deadline. “This is a 15-year project. We want to take these characters in the future. I see an opportunity in the market—we have the characters and the history.” 

Elf Labs is also developing the RoboStars, Sparkling Princess and Preschool Princess properties featuring characters like Cinderella, Rapunzel and Belle with plans for content in 2025 and a global consumer products program featuring books, apparel, and other merchandise. The company is also targeting RoboStars for animated content, interactive games, and digital experiences.  It also recently secured investment from MaryRuth’s Organics and formed a strategic partnership with E.L.G Foods to create Princess-themed salty snacks with collectible add-ons.

“The hook with many titles like RoboStars and Once Upon A Zombie is taking public domain materials and transforming them to make IP,” an intellectual property attorney said. “It is a variation on a theme, and it can be successful under the right circumstances. It is all about recognizing that whatever rights you achieve based on things that are public domain is always going to be necessarily limited. You are going to have rights to exactly what you are doing and nothing more.”  

Popularium, on the other hand, is headed by Magic the Gathering creator Robert Garfield, and has taken a more focused approach since forming in 2022. It expects to launch its Chaos Agent game next year, but licensing plans will wait until the title is released and takes hold in the market. The game is a free-to-play auto-battler title, a subgenre of strategy video games in which players build a team of characters and watch them fight against other teams without further input.  

The company has plans for multi-player tournaments (with up to 64 players participating at the same time) with 30-minute qualifying rounds. The Chaos Agent title is a form of blockchain gaming that uses distributed ledger technology, which allows for greater security, democratization, and user control over in-game assets. Popularium launched the game’s public alpha phase at the Gen Con gaming conference in Indianapolis in August. 

“We want players to be able to trade [characters and items], sell them, and store them indefinitely. The sort of things you would do with a deck of cards,” Garfield told the gaming web site Inverse. “We hope to create a small but meaningful example of a multiplayer live-service game built around the commitment of players able to enjoy it as long as they want to.”