The best kind of protection for an imaginary character, is the deposit at the SIAE, at the section for inedited work, as this is what it is and therefore it gets protected by the copyright. To this, another protection can be added by registering the name of the character as a trademark, which plays a fundamental role also for the fact that it can be renewed every ten years without losing the economical factor. The regulation over copyright is rather standardized in the more advanced countries and it is normally guaranteed without complying to any specific formalities. Particularly, there is a specific international agreement between many countries, the Berne Convention, which provides that the authors enjoy the same rights overseas as in their own country, without fulfilling any formalities (art. 5 Berne Convention). So, in order to extend the protection overseas, nothing needs to be done, apart from making some registrations at the relevant public offices in the event of the character being published and in order to have some proofs of their own creation. In fact, the deposits we often file, including the Italian one at the SIAE, are made for the main purpose of supplying a proof of being the creators of the work, but the right is acquired at the time of actually realizing it.