User:SOTO/Forum Archive/Inclusion debates/@comment-4028641-20170222073756/@comment-5918438-20170226185217

All those quotes saying they didn't have permission to call them "Daleks" are wrong, at least according to LEGO Batman's director. It is interesting, though, how he says they got permission from the BBC. It is maybe possible that McKay is not informed about the source of their licensing for the Daleks. Or maybe we're not totally informed about the current legalities: maybe, within reason, the BBC do currently have the right to allow productions to use the Daleks' likenesses.

Looking around the net, I'm getting a bit of an impression that (there's at least a popular enough idea that) the BBC owns the Daleks' likenesses, while the Nation estate owns the name. I don't think that is correct, and certainly we're seeing in the quotes above from the director that they did not have to call the Daleks simply British robots. I wish there was more information to be found on the legalities, though. Surely there must be something in the end credits, right? "Daleks used with permission by...", or at the very least a credited by credit.

The Looney Tunes film, by the way, seems way more legally complicated. I don't think it's so clear that they actually had the right to use the Daleks in that one.