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The Superman Copyright Reversion Litigation

The NYT reports:

... A federal judge [in Los Angeles] on Wednesday ruled that the heirs of Jerome Siegel — who 70 years ago sold the rights to the action hero he created with Joseph Shuster to Detective Comics for $130 — were entitled to claim a share of the United States copyright to the character. The ruling left intact Time Warner’s international rights to the character, which it has long owned through its DC Comics unit.

And it reserved for trial questions over how much the company may owe the Siegel heirs for use of the character since 1999, when their ownership is deemed to have been restored. Also to be resolved is whether the heirs are entitled to payments directly from Time Warner’s film unit, Warner Brothers, which took in $200 million at the domestic box office with “Superman Returns” in 2006, or only from the DC unit’s Superman profits. ...

Bill Patry at the Patry blog opines:

... it is a brilliant opinion that must have taken an extraordinary amount of time. It is very readable (and with great pictures!), which is very high praise given the extreme complexity of the facts and the legal issues at stake, If there was a Pulitzer Prize for judicial opinions, Judge Larson would win (with supporting awards for his hard-working clerks.).

The opinion is available in PDF here. And, see also. Embedded within the analysis is a cautionary tale of how depressingly poorly the Copyright Act protects the interests of actual human authors and their heirs.

Posted by Ann Bartow on March 30, 2008 6:10 PM |

Comments

My own opinion is that a reasonable copyright act would have placed the work into the public domain upon the death of the creator if not earlier, maybe ten years after the publication date.

I have never understood the sympathy some feel for heirs. Why would an heir be entitled to the fruits of someone else's creation any more than you or I? A wealthy heir is akin to someone who has won the lotto. In the brokerage business we disparagingly refer to wealthy heirs as "idiot sons" or "lucky sperm".

Posted by: Jardinero1 [TypeKey Profile Page] | March 31, 2008 2:55 PM

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