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troperville

Screwed by the Network/Lawyers: In two flavors.
- On the one hand there's Random House, which made it a habit of continually reprinting new editions of the series (in most cases, however, only the first eleven or so) solely to renew their copyright so that the rights would not revert to the estate of Robert Arthur (they didn't want to lose their royalties). At the same time, because so many changes were made in personnel, executives, and even owners over the years, very few at Random House knew precisely how valuable The Three Investigators was as a franchise, let alone why. This resulted in a number of ill-considered moves such as attempting to age the boys up, injecting more action into the stories, and creating new series runs which focused on being more modern and hip. Eventually, however, Random House did let the copyright lapse so that the books reverted to Elizabeth Arthur, Robert's daughter. This meant a) she could receive the royalties she had been rightfully owed due to her father's contract and b) she could, conceivably, find a new publisher and new authors who would do right by the series.
- On the other hand...there was the company Kosmos based in Germany. Long and messy litigious story made short, said Predatory Business attempted to infringe on Arthur's trademark (and Random House's) through various shady and illegal means, whether going behind Ms. Arthur's back; claiming she'd given permission for them to continue the series; manipulating Random House's legal department after those members long familiar with the series had retired and been replaced by newbie lawyers who could be more easily hoodwinked; or even registering a Trademark for the question mark logo (back-dated to before Random House's contract ran out and the rights reverted to the Arthur estate) and using it to try and claim they had sole ownership of the franchise and its characters, as well as claiming that the different names for the boys in the German printings meant those books had never had any connection to Arthur's and did not belong to him or his daughter, but them. Needless to say Ms. Arthur and her lawyers (and those of Sony BMG, the company to which she had actually granted rights and which was properly using and defending them) have fought tooth and nail against all this, and while certain legal battles carry on even to this day, for the most part she has managed to retain sole ownership and rights to the series, protecting it from those who would attempt to make money off it by any means.
- For now, however, she is rightfully keeping the books and all rights to them close to her chest, only allowing the filming of a few movies and the continuation of the book series overseas where they are still written and marketed respectfully—which means that for the foreseeable future, there won't be any new American books, or American reprints of the old ones. Details of all this can be found in this interview.