User blog comment:Chugite/so are Quality Comics characters public domain or what?/@comment-1212133-20101120055938

Fact is that the Quality books were not renewed. You can look at the copyrights office renewal records and see that for yourself. Anything that was not renewed 28 years after its publication fell into the public domain that was the law. So while DC bought quality they failed to secure their rights when they did not renew the books. However, DC comics does hold trademarks to many of the predominate Quality characters such as Blackhawk and Plastic Man. So in a nutshell DC does not own the copyrights, but they do hold some trademarks.

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/firstperiod.html