[mort]

Hi all. I saw some ads for the 2019 Licensing Expo and was wondering how someone who is not a representative of a larger company (i.e Bandai, NECA, Hasbro, etc.) would go about obtaining licenses for a relatively untouched property.

Can an individual buy the right to manufacture merchandise of a property, provided they have the capital up front to do so? Say the 2011 cartoon Sym-Bionic Titan, for example. You would think Cartoon Network would have made toys for a show with giant robots and aliens, but they never did. Could a fan buy the rights themselves and have figures of the mechs made?

Stretching even further into unlikelihood, could a fan of a property, realizing it's about to be a hot commodity, beat a major company to the punch in the race to secure patents for merchandising? Or, do major companies have a general, mutual understanding of who gets the rights to what property?