List of DWU concepts not owned by the BBC

The following is a non-exhaustive list of recurring characters, species and concepts which have appeared in Doctor Who, or any of its licensed spin-offs, where the owner of the element is not the BBC.

When a freelance writer writes new Doctor Who stories, they have the option of retaining control of any new characters. Thus, the writer, not the BBC, holds legal rights to the character or concept.

This can result in officially licensed, non-BBC-affiliated stories, like the Dalek comic stories in TV Century 21, the television series K9, or the Faction Paradox series.

Alternatively, licensed publishers sometimes retained the rights to characters and concepts introduced in their Doctor Who stories, as opposed to either the BBC or the individual writers. According to John Dorney, for as long as Virgin Books were in business publishing Doctor Who books, they retained the rights to characters and monsters introduced in Virgin New Adventures and Virgin Missing Adventures novels, although those rights appeared to have reverted to the original writers after the company's demise.

This rule is, however, not absolute. For example, Neil Gaiman claimed that he did not independently control the rights to the Corsair and would need the BBC's permition to write further stories with the character.