Talk:RWBY (manga)/@comment-5624349-20151110193200/@comment-1458758-20151110215611

.... You don't know how copyright works, do you?

They didn't sell RWBY, that's obvious, but clearly Shueisha wanted in on the market for RWBY. So they got into negotiations with RT and came to an arrangement.

Like how Marvel owns the X-Men, but the movie rights belong to like Fox studios, Shueisha clearly got the rights, or at least permission to make a print media version of RWBY. Once they have that permission, so long as they abide by the stipulations of their contract, they could do whatever the hell they want with it. They could make a manga under the RWBY franchise name that has nothing to do with the characters at all, so long as they weren't violating the terms of the agreement they could do whatever without RT being able to complain about it legally. These type of deals for intellectual property happen all the time.