Board Thread:Sonic News and Updates/@comment-11463617-20150330012608/@comment-1986314-20150330163850

I did some research on the matter, and found a good article on the whole "Penders vs. Archie vs. Sega" debacle. Here is a snip from the post:


 * On August 27, 2013, in response to fans attempting to raise money to license his characters so they could appear in Archie’s comics, Penders indicated that any licensing of his characters would be contingent upon certain stipulations, including: the deaths of any of his characters would have to be approved by him first (but aside from death he would give complete freedom with his characters, except for Locke, Julie-Su, and Lara-Su), nothing involving the characters Julie-Su, Lara-Su, and Locke could contradict his stories about them set in the future (somewhat difficult, since Locke had been killed after Penders left the book), and any story involving Lara-Su had to be read and approved by him first (he indicated that he did not need to read and approve stories by any of his other characters). However, he clarified that he did not have a strong need or desire for his characters to appear in the Sonic books, stating on September 3 “Frankly, at this point, I really DON’T CARE if my characters are EVER seen in any upcoming story in the SONIC series.”


 * It should be noted that Penders made clear that these stipulations were referring to licensing in general, not specifically about Archie, and that he spoke “with the caveat that my response and terms I set down are neither confirmation or denial of any points of agreement I may or may not have with Archie Comics.”


 * Penders did not specify if he meant that the settlement allowed Archie to use the characters freely or if he meant Archie could use the characters if he was paid a licensing fee. When asked if his statements meant that Archie Comics Publications would have to pay him to use his characters, he replied “I really can’t confirm or deny any of the terms agreed to between Archie and myself. When people have asked whether or not Archie can use my characters, the correct answer - without devulging any of the terms we agreed to - is that they can. Whether they choose to or not is a business decision only they can make”. It should also be noted that any usage of the characters would have to be approved by SEGA, the company Penders is seeking legal action against. This could, theoretically, have some negative impact on the odds of his creations appearing, if anyone at SEGA were to bear any ill will toward the man trying to sue them. It should also be noted that any deal with Penders would likely be extremely complicated due to Archie’s apparent refusal to acknowledge his ownership of any content (possibly done since acknowledging his ownership could have a negative effect on Archie’s relationship with SEGA).


 * In August 2013, the plot device of a reality-warping machine in Worlds Collide was used to rewrite the timeline of the Sonic comics.

Source: http://theamazingsallyhogan.tumblr.com/post/68112487973/sonic-the-hedgehog-ken-penders-bioware