In the US the original work is still public domain but you own the IP to any additions that you made to the source material. A company with lots of money could threaten to sue smaller studios for infringing their IP even if they were only using the original public domain work.
In the US the original work is still public domain but you own the IP to any additions that you made to the source material. A company with lots of money could threaten to sue smaller studios for infringing their IP even if they were only using the original public domain work.