For one publisher to stop distributing their core titles to the UK because of a licensing problem is unfortunate. When a second publisher has exactly the same problem, it starts to seem careless. But we're way past that point.

Okay, this is a bit of a side issue for American readers. It's also a bit of a side issue for me - I was picking up TRANSFORMERS for nostalgia purposes, but I can happily live without it. GI JOE? Not interested, thanks. Reams of manga titles I was never reading to start with? Again, not much of a concern to me. In fact, the sign that's appeared in my store window only apologises for the absence of TRANSFORMERS and GI JOE, presumably on the sound basis that they're the two that have a significantly large audience. And quite honestly, my life is not greatly emptier for the lack of 1980s TOY ADVERT REVIVAL MONTHLY.

What ought to be attracting a bit more attention, though, is how some relatively major publishers managed to get themselves into this mess in the first place. And it's certainly not a marginal issue for them - last I checked, exports outside North America accounted for something like 20% of Diamond's sales. It's not like Dreamwave were just sending half a box to Munchengladbach. Of course, this isn't going to put anyone under, and in practice the publishers will probably sort it out either by getting a wider licence or reselling their material to the local licensees. But the point is, this is not marginal.

'My life is not emptier without TOY ADVERT REVIVAL MONTHLY.' Now, call me crazy, but if my business were built substantially around licensed material, I would devote some considerable time to making sure I understood what I had licensed, what with it being my source of income and all. However, this does not seem to be a universally held view in the comics industry.

By most accounts, the problems which have arisen here do not stem from any highbrow technicality. The publishers in question acquired the North American rights, and then proceeded to sell their products all over the planet. You would have thought that this was the sort of thing that might leap out at you.

The idea of comics that can't be distributed worldwide is certainly not alien to Diamond. Flick through the company's catalogue and you'll find some scattered solicitations labelled "NOTE: Not available in Canada, Hong Kong or the UK."

These seem, for the most part, to be porn comics. The likely reason why you can't get them here (if for some bizarre reason you would want to - if you're reading this, you have internet access, for christ's sake) is that they would be seized on decency grounds by customs. UK customs still retain the quaint idea that they can seize material on import which it would be perfectly legal to produce and distribute in the UK, on the rather tenuous grounds that the relevant laws allow them to apply their own idea of decency. Personally, I think that power went out with the Human Rights Act 1998, so if anyone feels like taking them to court over it, do give me a call.

'The idea of comics that can't be distributed worldwide isn't alien to Diamond.' But I digress. As I was saying, Diamond is already aware of the concept of comics that can't go to particular parts of the world, so presumably the infrastructure is in place to deal with this sort of situation. So how did this go unnoticed for so long?

It's tempting to attribute it to Americans being too dumb to realise that "North America" is not the same thing as "the Whole Planet", but that would be facetious. The most likely explanation is a fairly cavalier disregard for the legal side of things. Do we have a licence? We do? Fine. Don't bother me with the details. Except, of course, the scope of the licence is hardly a detail. It kind of defines what you've licensed. Something worth knowing before you hand over the money, if you ask me.

The legalities are always worth paying attention to, especially when you're dependent on an effective licence to permit you to publish your most popular products. Comics professionals, and publishers, do have an unfortunate track record of trying to fudge things at the edges, or of assuming that they can get away without documenting their intellectual property arrangements.

Often you can, as long as you never fall out with anyone. But if you do, then the cost of paying the lawyers to sort out the mess will vastly exceed the amount they would have charged you to document it properly in the first place. If everyone involved in MIRACLEMAN had used lawyers all along the line, Neil Gaiman would not need to publish a fundraising book to cover the costs of disentangling it all. And people fall out surprisingly regularly. Some publishers seem to understand this. You don't see Dark Horse getting itself into this sort of situation.

'Comics professionals have an unfortunate track record of trying to fudge things.' Even allowing for a cavalier attitude to law, though, it's hard to fathom how three publishers, each presumably with the benefit of legal advice, could make the same mistake. On the one hand, if your client comes to you and says he's planning to sell his products worldwide, you'd be pretty dumb to go ahead and draft a North American licence. On the other, any publisher ought to be getting some sort of explanation of what the draft means before signing it - and the territorial scope is so elementary that you'd think it would come out at that stage. For something like this to be overlooked in one case could be ascribed to a freakish instance of miscommunication. But in three? How?

There is a more cynical explanation - that the publishers knew full well what they were buying but figured that they could get away with it regardless. They might have reasoned that the level of imports through the grey market would be too small to attract the attention of the local licensee. But the prominence of US imports in the European direct market would make that, at best, optimistic. It's one thing to take a commercial view of your contract rather than an excessively literal one, but we're some distance away from that line. Even if the licensor didn't care, whoever holds the TRANSFORMERS licence for Germany was never likely to be thrilled.

This is the sort of cock-up that helps to give the impression that comics are some sort of cottage industry. Of course, if you went into the comics industry with a view to making comics, there's a fair chance that you'll view the business side of things as a deeply unwelcome chore. That's perfectly understandable, but if you're going to assume responsibility for that part of the publishing process then you'll just have to grit your teeth and get on with it. Even if that does mean talking to the lawyers.

Paul O'Brien is the author of the weekly X-AXIS comics review.

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