Similarly with the Hanna Barbera Super Friends rights to Black Lightning / Vulcan situation.
I often see Hanna Barbera are the ones vilified and accused of ripping off/stealing the character and just changing the name.
HB had already licensed DC characters for their cartoon.
They unlike DC at the time, wanted to diversify what was essentially the Justice League, to better represent their audience.
As far as diversity Black Lightning was pretty much all DC had, the rest HB had to create themselves on the fly.
Hanna Barbera was ready to use Black Lightning, and pay DC to use him like any other DC character, which they did.
Then they were told, to us Black Lighning they had to pay extra to Tony Isabella who owned royalties on the character use.
As per the contract HB like all the other characters they licensed, were willing to pay to use him. That "extra" to Isabella should have come from DC's already payed cut of what HB payed. Not been an extra charge to HB.
It's DC who was unwilling to pay Isabella from
their cut, and they told HB to just reinvent and call him something else, so
DC did not have to pay Isabella.
All this was incredibly parodied by Isabella himself in the story "The Other Black Lightning"
Where Barbara Hanna and her "Circus" hire a guy to be the Other Black Lightning.
In the end, Jefferson Pierce (through the words of Tony Isabella) is the bigger man, doesn't blame him(the character), and instead embraces the "new" hero.