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Home / copyright / United States / Is it a bird? Is it a 'plane? No...it's Judge Stephen G Larson

Is it a bird? Is it a 'plane? No...it's Judge Stephen G Larson

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United Press International reports that the heirs of Jerome Siegel, one of the creators of Superman, has won the right to a share in the man of steel’s copyright. Siegel and his co-creator, Joseph Schuster, signed away the copyright to DC Comics for $130 seventy years ago. The decision may pose a challenge to Time Warner’s plans to make new Superman films in the coming years.

IESB.com claims that what this decison actually means may be more complicated than one would expect since the award concerns Superman’s first appearance, and he evolved after that date, with kryptonite and the Daily Planet not coming until later.

The IPKat says this is a toughie. While we might want to reward authors’ whose works have become unexpectedly successful, if we’re too willing to vary assignments retrospectively, entrepreneurs won’t enter them at all and the authors will lose out.

Is it a bird? Is it a 'plane? No...it's Judge Stephen G Larson Is it a bird? Is it a 'plane? No...it's Judge Stephen G Larson Reviewed by Anonymous on Wednesday, April 02, 2008 Rating: 5

2 comments:

  1. AnonymousWednesday, 2 April 2008 at 17:14:00 GMT+1

    Seigel has already had quite a bit more than 130USD from DC/Time Warner...(from wikipedia)...

    "Siegel in 1975 launched a public-relations campaign to protest DC Comics' treatment of him and Shuster; ultimately Warner Communications, DC's parent company, awarded Siegel and Shuster $35,000 a year"

    (Incidentally, there's a long history of fall outs/legal disputes between comic artists/authors and the big imprints, see for example Jack Kirby/Marvel - it makes for an interesting area of copyright law)

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousThursday, 3 April 2008 at 14:24:00 GMT+1

    An interesting post about the decision and comic books can be found on Patry's blog, about 1-2 weeks ago.

    ReplyDelete

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