AEW Legends Line - Legalities & Copyright

To give you a quick idea of what should be possible, take a look at the Storm Hogan figures or the Legends of Wrestling games from the mid 00's. For example with Hogan, Storm made pretty much every iconic Hogan attire including Hollywood Hogan without issue. But they had to omit anything that would be a WWE owned trademark, such as the NWO logos on the boots or a NWO t-shirt. On the other hand, they did license the artwork for the tshirts for both Hollywood figures from the artist, which is something Mattel/WWE would never do.

If you look closely, you'll see the Legends of Wrestling games use a lot of iconic attires. But there are some minor tweaks made to get around copyright/trademark issues. For example the Piper image on the cover of the game is a shirt that says "Piper!" in the classic "Hot Rod!" font. WWE owns the design for that shirt though, so it was tweaked. One of Owen Hart's attires is actually his Slammys gear (which I'm not sure Jazwares could/would make), but if you look closely instead of saying "Slammy Winner" the text just says "Owen Hart."

Any intellectual property owned by WWE or another party is going to be off limits, including logos or names/phrases. So for example if they signed Bryan Adams, you could probably see a Kronik figure, but Adam Bomb would be unlikely. Same would go for things like the NWO logo, or an iconic tshirt design that WWE controls. But the vast majority of gimmicks and attires, particularly for folks who didn't work for WWE during the 90's "everybody has a profession" era are going to be possible.

Where it gets muddier is that trademarks expire and needed to be renewed. It's sort of a "use it or lose it" situation. WWE actually lost the rights to the War Games for a period of time, and had to buy the rights back from MLW. So tons of gimmick names from the 80's/90's expired. In some cases, the wrestler filed for ownership of the name and used it on the indies. In other cases, nobody had ownership, but the workers continued to wrestle under that name/gimmick on the indies and and trademark was basically considered abandoned. If you google you should be able to find new stories and court cases for Brutus Beefcake and Demolition, who both fell into this situation and continue to use the name/merch outside of WWE.

And of course there are going to be legal messes that Jazwares may decide to just sidestep. The Patriot gimmick is owned by Honky Tony Man, but that is disputed by Del Wilkes, who most notably wrestled under the mask. Del has PWT merch as Del "The Patroit" Wilkes. It might be possible for Jazwares to make a Del Wilkes figure in Patriot gear, but may not be worth the possible legal trouble. Or a Raven figure wouldn't be able to include any of his iconic tshirts (bands, Sandman, etc) unless they licensed the rights from whoever owns those rights.

Anyone under contract to WWE is going to be off limits, at least for the duration of that contract. I expect people like DDP and Jake will end up signing with moving over the AEW merch whenever their WWE deals expire. My gut feeling is those dates are fairly soon, and part of why we're suddenly seeing new WWE figures is partially to undercut demand for future Jazwares figures. But WWE's legends roster is about as small as it has ever been, and there are literally hundreds of possibilities.

So to some of the examples you noted, The Natural Dustin is almost a given, I think. Sting should have very few restrictions besides not using any NWO/Wolfpac logos, and possibly his TNA Joker facepaint. We have seen WWE need to tweak/adjust some attires as well because there's IP that is owned by another company - changing the font on Seth's Bears attire, or leaving the X off of his X-Men gear. But there will be the same ways Jazwares can/will work around limitations if they desire. But on the whole there should be more than enough meat on the bones to make put some figures collectors have been asking for for years.

I wonder since AEW has some NWA wrestlers on the show that they could make some legends from their NWA days? If I was Billy Corgan I would want the NWA name out in public by any means.

That'd be tricky. Not only would you have to get the NWA's permission, but you have to get the beltmaker's permission as well. I don't know if there's enough meat on the bone for AEW to potentially split the sales of a figure 3-4 ways.

Here's my list of guys who I think are high enough marquee and are available:

AEW contracted
Sting
Taz
Arn Anderson
Tully Blanchard
80s Tony Schiavone - this would be more of an online exclusive I'd think or a chase

Non-AEW
Steiners
Road Warriors
Nikita Koloff
Raven
Sabu
Sandman
Owen Hart - although I personally think a Super7 deal is more likely

A couple things. Jeremy said there will 99.9% be a legends line.

Cody did get his Rhodes name back because WWE let the copyright lapse.

Storm got around the nWo logo, by doing a hWo logo instead for Hogan World Order.

And I thought Salvatore Sincere owns the Patriot gimmick? Did he sell it to Honky Tonk Man?

It would be really nice to not have to pay a ton of money tracking down old TNA Christian Cage and Jeff Jarrett figures just to get NWA belts is all I’m saying

In Dustin Rhodes' case, I dont see how a company can own plain trunks and knee pads

People really think owning footage = owning that person's likeness and that's not how it works at all lmao.

With Jeremy anything is possible since most of the classic superstar line was contracted to Jakks and not WWE at the time. Jeremy will sign alumi talent under Jazzware contracts even if those talents never worked for AEW so hopefully guys like Owen Hart get made under this new Legends line whenever it starts.

Here's hoping a Nick Mondo figure is a possibility as he is a part of the AEW staff despite not wrestling for them.