Here is my book, or, rather, the first part of four to come. I greatly appreciate any feedback or improvements. The title isn't final since the name "Lich King" will probably be copyrighted by at least two: Blizzard and a thrash metal band by the same name.
I chose the name Lich King because the MC, who is a "king", in a sense, becomes a machine with no emotions, so he is dead as a human and only looks the part - hence Lich King, meaning Dead King.
The biggest competition you'd have with Lich King is 1) people being confused and thinking it has to do with either of those things when it doesn't and 2) search results ranking.
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can they copyright it if I refer to the character as Lich King in the book itself? Even if his description/origin have nothing to do with Blizzard's creation?
βI don't write a book so that it will be the final word; I write a book so that other books are possible, not necessarily written by me.β β Michel Foucault
When you directly reference something else that is of the same name is where it can get sketchy.
I don't know if I fully understand your question. Can they come at you with copyright if you directly call your character Lich King even though he is in no way related to Blizzard's?
They can copyright their specific character, so you could not write and commercialize THEIR Lich King -- his definitions, descriptions, story, lore, etc.
But say, I wrote a story and created a villain called the Witch King. As long as my Witch King is created of my own universe and ideas and is NOT a replica of the Lord of the Rings Witch King, they may have the same name, but it is no copyright infringement.
If you're nervous about just the name, then you could change it. But in general, there's no... claim. A similar thing can be said with using names of nonfictional people.
If you write a character named Stephen King, the name itself is not a copyright or trademark infringement if your Stephen King is not trying to be a mirror image of the real Stephen King. Usually the only way you can get away with it in THIS case is by writing satire as satire allows fair use.
You just have to keep in mind 1) the originalness of the design, 2) people may wonder if your character was inspired by the more famous one (which doesn't really matter), and 3) search results rankings will be lower if there is a more famous version that comes up when you write Lich King
