A lawsuit in federal court will answer the question of whether Zorro is a public domain property that can be exploited at will, or subject to licensing by Zorro Productions Inc.  The suit was filed by Robert Cabell, who published a Zorro musical based on the first Zorro story from 1919 and the Douglas Fairbanks film released in 1920.  Cabell says that Zorro Productions Inc. has "engaged in a campaign of intimidation and coercion" against him to prevent him from licensing a new production of the musical and to force the licensee to use a musical from ZPI instead.  

Cabell argues that the copyright to the original 1919 story by Johnston McCulley from All-Story Weekly expired in 1975, and that the copyright to the 1920 film The Mark of Zorro expired in 1976. 

ZPI is acting on the basis of trademark filings on Zorro marks between 1987 and 1997.  Those filings were fraudulent, according to the complaint, because ZPI knew that the property was in the public domain. 

"[T]he defendants have built a licensing empire out of smoke and mirrors," the complaint says. 

The suit seeks a judgment that Cabell’s musical does not infringe; an injunction against ZPI preventing it from making claims of infringement; cancellation of ZPI’s federal trademark registrations; and monetary damages.    

In the comic business, two publishers are currently publishing Zorro works. Dynamite Entertainment has been publishing licensed comics featuring Zorro since 2007 (see, most recently, "Alex Ross Painting First Issue of Pulp Crossover Comic"), and Hermes Press recently released Alex Toth’s Complete Dell Adventures of Zorro, a hardcover archival collection.