Re: How many Superman heirs are there?

On Apr 8, 5:45 pm, arrom...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Ken Arromdee) wrote:
In article <f4f2ea56-b656-42f5-bfb5-0563be36a...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,

<wes.tibu...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Does anyone have any details on the judgement? It seems manifestly
off-balance if, after DC (et.al.) spending years developing the
property into something with staying power, investing massive amounts
of money (and, granted, profiting from that investment) that the
courts can turn and say that without taking on any of the future risk
(of any of the past risk for that matter) the heirs are now deserving
of a 50% share of interim profits, and 50% of all future profits.

Or do i have the wrong take on the matter?

You have the wrong take on the matter. Copyrights were supposed to expire.
DC put all that money and effort into the property, fully expecting that it
would expire in 1995 and that the now-developed property would be available
for use by other people.

Then Disney came and bought extensions to copyright laws. DC got a
windfall--even though they had invested money in a property that was going
to expire in 1995, they suddenly found that it wouldn't expire in 1995 and
their investment bought them more years than they expected. It's an unearned
windfall.

All that the Siegels are doing is taking advantage of a clause saying that
they instead of DC can get the unearned windfall.
--

This is in response to both of your last posts.

While it is true that DC should have expected its copyright on the
Superman story in Action #1 to expire in 1994, that would not have
ended its ability to profit from the character. It would still hold
copyright on all subsequent Superman stories until each in its turn
expired. And any other person wanting to produce a Superman story
would only be able to use those parts of the Superman "legend" that
are inherent in the stories that are public domain. At this point in
time, had the copyright law not been extended, that would have been
anything published up to and including the end of 1952.

So no Supergirl...no Legion of Super-Heroes...no Krypto...no
Brainiac...a very limited version of Luthor (the current version is
really based on stories that began appearing in the late '50s). Even
the publicly accepted version of Krypton--whether the Weisinger era or
Byrne era one--is absent from those stories.

A further complication is trademark. DC owns a valid and legally
defensible trademark in the name "Superman" and the familiar red-and-
blue costume with "S" shield. As noted previously in this thread, the
earliest Tarzan novels are in public domain and, although there have
been "non-authorized" editions of those novels published in recent
years (as opposed to the ones authorized by ERB Inc., the corporation
owned by Burroughs' estate), there has been no rash of new Tarzan
material based on the PD material. The reasons for this are probably
two-fold: 1) ERB Inc. holds a trademark on "Tarzan" and 2) any one
attempting to publish such new material might still expect a legal
challenge from ERB Inc., a challenge that the new material violates
things still in copyright.

I suspect the same would have happened to anyone who wanted to do a
Superman story in 1994 (had the law not been changed). And Time Warner
has far deeper pockets and more aggressive lawyers than ERB Inc.



.

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