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March 31, 2008: Explaining the Superman Copyright Decision

ComicBookResources.com has published an excellent article with comments and legal explanations by Brendan McFeely, an attorney at Kane Kessler, PC, in New York City on the ins and outs of the federal judge's ruling giving the Siegel family a share of the copyright to Superman.

    Regarding Superman, the question of ownership of those rights is what has been at issue. "The problem arose when, in 1938, Siegel and Shuster assigned the rights to Detective Comics as a work made for hire," Brendan McFeely told CBR News. "This gave Detective Comics the right to completely control the character, and made Detective Comics -- and its successors in interest - very, very rich."

    In 1976, the US Congress amended the copyright law to allow the creators of works-for-hire to reclaim their rights under very strict conditions. Chief among these requirements is that the registered copyright in question - in this case, Superman - be due for renewal. The rights to the Superman character as embodied in "Action Comics" #1 were due for renewal in the 1970s.

    "The parties appeared to have agreed to allow DC to continue as the exclusive owner of the rights at that time," McFeely said. "But copyright law changed again in 1997, when Sonny Bono, then a Congressman, pushed through an amendment to the Copyright Act changing the conditions under which the heirs and estates of the original creators could attempt again to recapture their original rights."

    Changes in copyright law and the duration of rights were such that the original copyright transfer between Siegel & Shuster and Detective Comics was terminated in 1999. As such, the Siegel family's contention was that under the updated US Copyright Act, they had the right to recapture US rights to the character depicted in "Action Comics" #1. In the recent federal decision, "The court unequivocally found that [the Siegels] have that right and in fact now have recaptured the rights to Superman as set forth in 'Action Comics' #1," McFeely said.

    To put it as plainly as possible: the Siegels and DC are now joint owners of the Superman copyright, and have been since 1999.

Read the complete article at the CBR website.

Thanks to Nate Ruff (Nate1986) for the lead on this info.


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