Bill Willingham, the creator of Fables, which was later adapted into The Wolf Among Us, recently revealed that he had placed the series into the public domain. DC, however, was none too pleased about this, and has been claiming that it still owns the rights.
In a statement to IGN, the company said the following: "The Fables comic books and graphic novels published by DC, and the storylines, characters, and elements therein, are owned by DC and protected under the copyright laws of the United States and throughout the world in accordance with applicable law and are not in the public domain."
Willingham isn't taking this lying down, though, and in the posts where he said that Fables was going into the public domain, he attacked DC, claiming that those at the company "reinterpreted [their] contracts to assume they owned Fables outright." Willingham even went so far as to call them "thugs and conmen."
A messy situation to say the least, but one that seems rather confusing for the time being. Perhaps a court battle is in the future, or some similar legal action, but it's unlikely DC will just let Fables slip away.