Quote:
Originally Posted by SleepyBob
Except that those are creations of Rowling, so would be covered by copyright. It would be no different than transplanting Sherlock Holmes into a different setting (before the copyright expired). You couldn't do it. And if copyrights didn't expire, that would be a real problem.
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Let's make it more like Star Trek for other than Holmes and Watson, the "Holmes universe" is just old England and hardly copyrightable.
If you wrote a book with Start Fleet, Vulcans, Klingons, phasers, tri-corders, transporters, warp drive....but not Kirk, McKoy and Spock....you are still clearly writing in the Star Trek universe.
If you wrote a book with Earth like kind beings that fought Reptile like humanoids....you'd be fine. Think of how many times Romeo and Juliet have been written in modern context. As long as you don't call your characters "Romeo and Juliet", you'd be fine.
Elves, trolls, wizards, dwarves and the like are pre-copyright. You'd probably run afoul if you used "Muggle" as the name for your non-magical characters.
You have to be exceedingly lazy to not be able to come up with your own names even for familiar concepts.
There is simply no societal need for fiction to be protected by a time limited copyright.