It's enough of a hurdle to open up a lot of culture. Maybe not Mara Jade since she is probably the most popular Disney owned character to never appear on film o

It's enough of a hurdle to open up a lot of culture. Maybe not Mara Jade since she is probably the most popular Disney owned character to never appear on film or TV, but the act of having to itemize, describe, track, and actively protect a "derivative work mark" is not going to be pursued for every minor character or box office flop. I doubt even Disney would find it worthwhile to create, produce, and distribute non-trivial content to protect every minor character listed in Wookiepedia from the Legends canon. The reason I picked trademark law as a metaphor was exactly because some formerly profitable brands have been abandoned and then revived by third parties over the years, so there is precedent. What constitutes abandonment of a "derivative work mark" ultimately would probably be a delineation the courts would make. I'd hope that in a sane implementation of this scheme your strawman wouldn't hold up. It would be pretty easy to demonstrate that next to no money was spent on the creation or marketing of the product, and no one bought it, so that could still be considered abandonment. That being said, it wouldn't take much to produce new IP the keeps the mark alive so long it as it was 1) actually the same concept as the original mark (Mara Jade can't star in a rom com set in New York City without lightsabers. (Also Disney should call me about putting Mara Jade in a Rom Com set in NYC WITH lightsabers, because that would be amazing.)) and 2) gets some limited degree of public recognition.