Danjaq, LLC (formerly Danjaq SA) is the holding company responsible for the copyright and trademarks to the characters, elements, and other material related to James Bond on screen. It is currently owned and managed by the family of Albert R Broccoli, the co-initiator of the popular film franchise. EON Productions, the production company responsible for producing the James Bond films, is a subsidiary of Danjaq.

Danjaq was founded by Broccoli and Harry Saltzman after the release of the first James Bond film Dr No, in 1962, to insure all future films in the series. The new company was to be called Danjaq SA, a combination of Broccoli and Saltzman’s respective wives’ names (Dana Broccoli and Jacqueline Saltzman).

Due to financial difficulties, Saltzman later sold his share of Danjaq to United Artists in 1975. Beginning with 1977’s The Spy Who Loved Me, Danjaq began to share half the copyright and interests with United Artists Corporation, which is putatively the case still today.

Some sources, notably John Cork (the author of a number of books about Bond’s film history, and a producer of many documentaries created for the films’ Special Edition DVD releases), claim that Broccoli purchased this 50% stake of Danjaq back from UA in the mid-1980s. It has been further suggested that MGM/UA have an exclusive distribution deal with Danjaq that is far sweeter than when the shares were originally owned by Broccoli and Saltzman.

Although the trademarks for material related to the Bond films are held by Danjaq, the film properties (beginning with Dr No) are copyrighted by Danjaq and United Artists Corporation. The trademarks associated with the James Bond books and other non-film publications are held by Ian Fleming Publications.

Some James Bond films have been made outside the control of Danjaq, including a spoof called Casino Royale (1967) because the rights to that book had been sold prior to the EON/Danjaq deal, and a serious James Bond film called Never Say Never Again (1983), a remake of the Danjaq-approved film Thunderball; the latter was made possibly due to a legal dispute involving Kevin McClory, one of the co-writers of Thunderball, who was awarded the right to remake the film independently from any rights licensed from Ian Fleming’s companies.