Nobody owns content as ownership does not expire. People are incentivized to create content with a limited monopoly of finite duration. However, this means when they fail to licence it and thus chose to forgo revenue there is zero moral obligation to respect the monopoly.
Trademarks don’t have set expiration dates, yet 1/4 of Disney’s toys are for someone else’s original IP. Snow White, Peter Pan, etc and nobody seems to have a problem with this. In fact the oldest US trademark in use fall under the same heading with a Biblical figure Samson wrestling a lion.
And in fact Trademarks do go away without Defence. Which means they can be abandoned at which point it’s fine to use em.
