“In an ongoing Federal court battle over Superman, Judge Stephen Larson ruled Wednesday that the family of the superhero’s co-creator, Jerry Siegel, has “successfully recaptured” rights to additional works, including the first two weeks of the daily Superman newspaper comic-strips, as well as portions of early Action Comics and Superman comic-books.
The ruling is based on the court’s finding that these were not “works-made-for-hire” under the Copyright Act.
This means the Siegels — repped by Marc Toberoff of Toberoff & Associates — now control depictions of Superman’s origins from the planet Krypton, his parents Jor-El and Lora, Superman as the infant Kal-El, the launching of the infant Superman into space by his parents as Krypton explodes and his landing on Earth in a fiery crash.”
In a prior decision, it was established that Warners (and DC comics, which owns Superman–or most of him, now, I guess, but which itself is owned by Warners) has to start production by 2011 if they want to make a new Superman or Justice League movie, assuming the latter featured Superman (and they wouldn’t make one otherwise, you’d think). Otherwise the rights again return to the Siegel family, and Warners has to renegotiate them.
I’m not expert, to say the least, but this sounds like how elements of the old Bond movies like SPECTER and Blofeld are owned by producer Kevin McClory, which is why they aren’t used in any of the modern Bond films.
I assume Warners will negotiate a yearly stipend to cover the rights, unless the Siegel family overreaches here. Still, it’s a great day for lawyers on both sides of that fence.
