I guess this depends on whether you want to be credited every time when the adopted character is used it not.

The problem - If you sell an adopt outright (aka the Intellectual Property), the buyer actually has no obligation to credit you (with the exception of the original art created for which credit SHOULD be given). The character is now their intellectual property, and so they own it to do with as they see fit. This would be equivalent to Disney acquiring Fox. Disney now OWNS Fox and can do with Fox's characters as they please - aka "Disneyfy" them, etc. For example, this includes owning the Avatar franchise.

The solution - Sell the LICENSE to use the adopts. You retain ownership of said adopts, and the person who purchased the license from you must credit who the original owner is. Before Disney purchased Fox, they purchased a LICENSE for using Avatar in order to build "The World of Pandora" exhibit at Disney's Animal Kingdom. They didn't own Avatar back then. They simply purchased the permission in order to build the exhibit and worked out a negotiation with Fox to do so.

When you sell the license, you can place regulations as to what a character can and cannot do (i.e. "yiff is fine, but no BDSM/Rape/Gore situations), and make crediting mandatory, and you also retain the right to revoke the license for any infraction of these regulations.

Then again, when you get into the selling licenses business, you'd have to do your own "policing" as it were. Disney hires people who do this for them, and it's impossible to catch all infractions even for a big company like Disney.

When a person owns intellectual property and doesn't give credit to where they got it from, it is VERY impolite. Then again, maybe they forgot. Human nature sucks at times.

I hope this helps at any rate.

I don;t think being credited in every piece of art is needed since you are selling the characters as a whole not just a license like Jimbear said. As Jim said you can try doing licenses if you wanted but you'd need to put in a lot of work and thought and doing that could scare people away since they don;t own what they just purchased. Characters and such aren;t the same as buying a video game and adding to many stipulations can make it hard to make sales. I have seen it happen with full sales, people trying to make a ton of rules when they don;t own the characters any longer and people jut went elsewhere. The initial purchase and any art bought from you of course needs to be tagged with you but art from someone else I don;t think needs that

I technically wanted this for only my original designs, since wouldn't make sense to make these rules on pokemon adopts, etc fan adopts. I guess if I was in a design buyer's position, would be a pain to have to credit every pic, if im getting loads of art of it. Then again I see ppl crediting the original concept artist when they get art done of the adopt they bought from them, I see it a lot actually. Licensing stuff, yeah, sounds like something of a huge pain to manage and it would scare people, don't want that. @___@

Huh so far I have only seen adopts credited the first time or when they got a ych by the same artist or when it was an orginal species/private species adopt but that doesn;t mean I don;t just find different picture types from youI can see it being common practie. I'll have to look closer at that. But as for the licensing thing as I said if you wanna try hat look into it very closely and pick your rules carefully. I.E most would probably be ok with You have to tag me in all art using this design but a rule like no bonddage or no lewds etc hindering art they can get can become a very big issue.

Ohh yeah, that's way too picky, I allow pretty much anything with my adopts, but only rules basically is not selling it higher than what you paid for unless art is added etc, leaving my signature on the original adopt, even with editing it, and the credit thing (Only for originals) as I changed/made clearer. That no bondage etc I.E thing, sounds like a pain, I mean, you bought the character to do what you desire with it's body, lore etc. Closed Species....is just too much to manage and police, can never get into those adopts, the makers blow their rules out of proportions with those. I tried it when I was younger but none ever bought them.

well you can try it or maybe make another journal asking how people would feel about changing it more to a license idea