As yesterday’s interview with Joe Simon reminds us, the Siegels aren’t the family with a potential copyright case. The Shuster estate has filed to regain its share of Superman in 2013. Joe Simon has already negotiated a settlement for his co-creation of Captain America, and there are reports of smaller settlements arranged behind the scenes. With the Siegels’ newsworthy success, others have no doubt started looking into whether they might have a claim.

Some fans are understandably worried about the future of their favorite comics, but the likelihood is that relatively few viable termination claims will be filed and even fewer will have visible effects. Even if trademark law weren’t an issue — and it’s a big one — most creators simply have little prospect of earning substantial profits from their own versions of a character. Moreover, for creators already receiving royalties, the potential gain from a new settlement may not be enough to warrant an expensive and stressful lawsuit.

The biggest obstacle, however, is probably the law itself. Creators don’t have termination rights in work made for hire, while the procedural requirements for filing a valid termination are rigorous and arcane. Industry watchers are no doubt familiar with the failed lawsuits filed by Archie Comics artist Dan DeCarlo. Whatever the sympathy for his effort among fans and other artists, DeCarlo’s claims clearly did not fit within the current legal framework. In fact, had the judge in the Siegel case applied his expansive interpretation of derivative works to the pre-Action Comics house ads, the Siegels arguably would have lost.

Nonetheless, the fact that the Siegels and a few other creators or heirs may be able to gain from long-sold copyrights has caused a fair amount of controversy — and that will be the subject of the next, and last, post in this series.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 1:38 pm and is filed under DC Comics, Legal, Marvel, News & Views. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.