Making new characters?
 

I've always asked this to myself, when anime producers create new characters they have any way to know if the individual character traces they have in mind already exists?
Probably there are billions of anime characters and the probability of repeating characters is not that low is it?

Since each character idea is protected by copyright the one repeating the character would have to face law consequences for an involuntary act?

Nah, you can copy all you want unless you give the character exactly the same name and trace his visuals from the original - it is the concrete realisation that is copyrightable, not the generic idea of some character type.

Actually copyright only protect against theft of design, not idea. You can't copyright an idea, you can patent a design though.