Time Warner is no longer the sole proprietor of Superman.
A federal judge here on Thursday 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 reclaim their share of the U. S. 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 about 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 its “Superman Returns” in 2006, or only from the DC unit’s Superman profits.
Still, the ruling threatened to complicate Warner’s plans to make more films featuring Superman, including another sequel and a planned movie based on the DC Comics’ “Justice League of America,” in which he joins Batman, Wonder Woman and other superheroes to battle evildoers.
Good for Seigel’s family.
Seriously - $130? Why didn’t they settle out of court, just in the name of human decency?
Didn’t some unknown third guy sell his 10% stake in Apple for like $800 like 20 years ago?
Jojo, you’re thinking of Nolan Bushnell, who was offered a third of Apple by Steve Jobs for $50,000. He turned it down, but later ended up founding Atari. So you shouldn’t feel too bad for him.
Honestly, I’m really mixed on this whole issue. For one thing, the actual creators of Superman are dead, and while they should have received a lot more money for their product in their lifetimes I don’t exactly feel warm and squishy that their kids are suddenly making millions for what their dads did. For another, I can’t imagine this suit is going to hold. DC will probably spend millions to appeal this and then settle out. There’s no way they’re going to lose the trademark rights to Superman, especially since there’s only 20 or so more years until they start losing the copyrights to the earliest comics.
There’s a pretty good blog post about this at MightyGodKing
I take issue with the Headline, Oliver. Why not go with “A Huge Win for Jerome Seigel’s Family”?
Nope, I was thinking of Ronald Wayne. $800 for 10% of Apple. OUCH.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Wayne
Superman is an illegal alien. Deport his stupid ass.
Actually during one iteration of Superman there was a “what if” story where it was determined that since Superman’s Kryptonian birthing matrix did not open until he landed in Kansas he was a born American (and in the context of that story, eligible to run for President, which he did and won of course).
Also: Here’s some background on the lawsuit.
So many tangents to this copyright thing, too. It’s why, in part, that most recent Superboy started to be referred to as ‘Kon-el’ (before his death, and why its SuperMAN in the LSH cartoon instead of SuperBOY.
Oliver, I remember the story you’re referring tol the “Armageddon 2001″ arc that took place over one summer’s annuals. However, the establishment of the birthing matrix wasn’t first noted in this story, it in fact is considered post-Crisis canon. John Byrne’s “The Man of Steel” series posited the idea first.
I’m with August for the most part — I’m a strong advocate of creators’ rights but also strongly opposed to copyrights that last for decades after the creators’ deaths — but I would add there’s an issue of precedent here. There are plenty of still-living comic creators who stand to benefit from this decision. At worst, it’s an important symbolic gesture, not just for Siegel and Schuster but for guys like Kirby and Finger.
That is way too much analysis over the presidential eligibility of an unbalanced illegal alien suffering from multiple personality disorder.
I understand the reluctance to reward heirs for their father’s work, but I think there’s a larger issue at stake: creators’ rights. It’s not just about rewarding Siegel and Shuster’s heirs, it’s about punishing a system that negotiated in bad faith with them and rooked them out of millions in royalties (and continues to do so with other artists today). Some will say too bad, they shouldn’t have signed away the rights for $130; others will say $130 was considered a princely sum in 1938, the creators were happy to receive even that much for a comic book character, and they were of age and sound mind when they signed the papers. Technically true I suppose. But if they hadn’t taken the $130, Superman wouldn’t have been published and wouldn’t have become the franchise phenomenon that he did, because no other agency wanted to publish the work of two young unknowns. They were coerced (or lured) into signing away rights potentially worth millions for a relative pittance. That’s unjust, and it needs to be punished.