Oh dear, please everyone be quiet. If you love superman do not give these people more ammo. That lawyer is deluded if he thinks Siegel had that many stories in the bank before Action #1. Siegel’s crappy negotiations with DC when he was alive is going to destroy his creation. If they get what they now want it may not be economically viable for DC to carry on publishing and they have enough trademark rights and supporting character copyrights it won’t be the superman we know with another company. No one is on the fans’ side in this.

it won’t be justice if Superman is being published under anything other than a DC logo.

Lordy Daniel get a grip. The whole thing about “Evil” people at Time Warner is just trite.

1) This is the 2ed or 3rd time that National/DC/Time Warner et all will end up signing a deal with the Siegel and Shuster families. Enough is enough. Give the families several miliion and make them go away forever. How many more times are the families going to sue, or threaten to sue. They don’t seem to understand the nature of a settlement. This is nothng noble here. Congress, the true “villians” of this story, decided to monkey with the copyright rules. Basically they have laid the foundation for eternal copyright, so creators need never lose control of their creations. Maybe thats all well and good. But they basically also invalidated dozens of settlements that had been reached over the years with creators over their creations. It hasn’t happened yet, but in the future their are going to be massive legal problems with digital copyright over old comics. DC is going to suffer the most in the short term because they are the publishing house with the oldest stable of characters. But at some point it’s going to hit Marvel. So cheer this decision all you want, in the long run The Families willbe sated, Time Warner will have lost a few million dollars, and the fans will be screwed.

2) DC will never let Superman go to another publisher. And The Families are crazy if they think they can do that. TW would use the nuclear option and so tie this up in court for years, to the point that NO ONE could publish Superman stories. Look how long Casino Royal languished in development hell because of the conflicting claims on the story, much the way that the ownership of Thunderball is still a mess.

Long run, the fans get it in the end…..with a pointy stick.

Not to be a jerk or anything, but do these people have jobs or are they just wanting a big pay day so they don’t have to get one? I think they just sit around with their lawyer(s) looking for ways to sue DC/Time Warner.

Next thing you know they’ll be filing suit for Superman’s vast array of super powers. I am not a big DC fan by any means, but it would be an injustice to see him printed by any company other than DC.

Sorry, Daniel, but with fair justice, these families should shut down their lawyerly efforts. This is just an attempt to extort money from an idea that was rightly sold to the publishers.

The lawyers will make most of the money, and the families already got their due.

(Why should these children of the originators make any more money off of this? What did they do to deserve the big bucks? “royal blood” or something?)

Hopefully the parties involved do everything in their power to completely destroy Superman.

This is possibly the most ridiculous thing in the world ever. My sympathy for the Seigals/ Shusters only goes so far.
Superman was sold to DC way back in the day. That was a business deal. They may have been stiffed but the people who stiffed them have nothing to do with DC now and Siegal and Shuster made their choice and accepted what was on the table.
If the ownership of Superman is given to the heirs in this ridiculous “only in america” case what will they do with it? Take him away from the DC uninverse? Create their own Superman stories?
Have they any knowledge or experience in this field? I’m gonna take a wild guess and say no.
I mean no offence to any intelligent, independant American but the heirs need to move on and learn to provide for them selfs rather than trying to live off their ancestors work.
If they steal Superman through legal stupidity from DC they’ll destroy him more than any reboot ever could. FACT!

Man, you all need a law class or read a book before you start going on about things that you know nothing about.

I suggest everyone who think the Siegels are being ‘unfair’ should read up on copyright law and the changes since 1938, and then read the book “Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book”.

OMG. Are you kidding me. They people are still at it. What did the current heirs create? Not a dang thing. A deal was made a deal was upheld.

What are they going to do take Superman away from DC? Yeah right. That is will backfire faster than a Datsun in rush hour traffic.

I can see it now, Superman in the Marvel Universe. As if Marvel will deal with this family.

I’ve heard of cashing in, but these people need to give it a rest.

If the Siegels get control of Superman this will become a socialist nation, just like Russia and Europe! Oh wait, wrong group of jerks defending amoral multi-billion dollar corporate entities because they’re short-sightedly scared of getting their worlds a little jarred. No one can predict exactly what will happen, but I doubt Time/Warner is going to risk losing one of the most recognizable symbols in modern media. Somewhere somebodies gonna make a deal, and the Siegels will get a portion of the billions of dollars their patriarch would’ve earned if he’d had a publishing company of his own way back in the day, instead of just a brilliant idea. And if you have a problem with people getting cash just because of what their father did, then you have a huge problem with the real American way.

Very happy to read this. I’m now reading the judge’s opinion and am only disappointed by one bit: on page 47 he writes “free reign” instead of (the correct) “free rein”. Shame on you Mr. Larson!

The document is fascinating, inside you’ll find details of the negotiations between Siegel and Detective Comics, between these two parties and the McClure Syndicate, you’ll also find the origin of the mysterious and short-lived “Lois Lane, Girl Reporter” newspaper strip.

Putting aside any notion of who’s evil and who’s not, the Siegels likely view Superman material as part of an inheritance they are entitled to. Given this belief, they are legally within their right to try to get monies from the Superman material in a court of law. Ultimately it’s up to the courts to decide if the law states they are entitled to monies, and in some cases the courts are deciding in the affirmative. Sure, the Siegels want the money, as does DC. But without personally knowing the people in either side I don’t think it’s fair to automatically assume the worse possible motives to them. Jerry Siegel is dead, yes, but probably so are the people at DC who made the original deal.

I’m also not worried about Superman jumping ship to another company. Lots of Superman elements *are* owned by DC so the even if they win a few more things, it’ll probably be more profitable for the Siegels to strike a deal with DC than to try to take parts of the Superman pie elsewhere.

I dare any of the impotent fanboys who post in the threads about the Siegel/Time Warner suit to publicly accuse the Siegels of being greedy, or not having jobs (not that they actually seem to understand the subtleties of the case, mind you, or bother reading Mr. Trexler’s excellent posts about them) to make the same claims at a comic book convention, out loud, within earshot of any professional comic book creator.

Really. I dare you.

Wow greed knows no bounds.

All that is going to happen at the end of the day is they will determine what the Siegels own, and what DC owns and then both parties will sit down and hash out a deal.

and then DC can deal with Shuster’s estate and give them a fair deal when the time comes.

I am among those that think there needs to be a final settlement with the families. One final settlement that keeps the character firmly at DC but gives the families either a lump sum or a percentage of sales of the characters.

But, honestly, this constant legal battle over a panel here, a page there, this story, that story gets kinda tiring and, unfortunately, for a lot of fans it makes the families look bad, which is should not.

It would be nice if a final, final, final resolution could be reached.

Scott, you comment is great.

Thanks.

THIS WON’T GO AWAY LIKE A BAD COLD. DC COMICS AND THE SIEGEL FAMILY WILL THE SUPERMAN RIGHT IN COURT FOREVER. THE SIEGEL STILL NEED THE POWERS OF ATTORNEY FROM THE SCHUSTER FAMILY IF THEY WANTED THE RIGHT. THE DC COMICS AND THE SIEGEL’LAWYER SHOULD COME UP WITH A FAIR ANSWER TO THE SUPERMAN RIGHT. 2013 WILL STARTED ANOTHER SET OF PROBLEM. YOUR TRULY CHARLES DAVID HASKELL

I could care less about creators that signed away their rights. I’m cold and corporate when it comes to such things. I belive contracts should be honored and suckers should be shamed. DC has made Superman the icon he is today, not Siegel, not Shuster and certainly not the families of dead creators. They don’t deserve and should never have any rights to this character.

Lets be clear on this, Congress basicaly created an ex post facto law. It created a loophole that allowed creators, who didn’t like settlements they had made 30 or 40 years ago to back out of a legal deal.

And why are the familes doing this if they DON’T have a monetary interest. Are they greedy? That’s an individual interpertation of what their motivations are, but the bottom line is that they ARE in this for the money.

Time Warner: Give these people a lot of money and get an ironclad contract stating they won’t come back. Stop feeding lawyers. It can’t possibly make sense fiscally or for your PR.

Congress: Stop being lame and let copyrights expire.

Siegels: What’s the plan with what you’re getting? If you’re purely motivated by getting what you think you deserve, that’s fine. Get Time Warner to pay you a lot of money and STOP FEEDING LAWYERS. But if you’re doing this for the sake of integrity, demand that everything you just got the rights to be made freely available on the Internet to the entire world. Let children in Korea and India and China be inspired by the works of Siegel and Shuster. Maybe Jerry and Joe could get a smile in heaven as they start another creative renaissance.

All you people calling the Siegel & Shuster heirs “greedy”:

Congress changes a law, says “you’re entitled to THIS now” and you’re telling me the Siegel & Shuster heirs should just nobly waive the rights and money that congress says they now have a RIGHT to step up and claim?

Don’t get your Super-underoos in a twist, fanboy; I seriously doubt they have any interest in taking the character to another publisher. Siegel & Shuster were probably stiffed by the deal they made in the 1930s, yeah – but the heirs are not trying to re-negotiate that deal. They are just asking for what is rightfully theirs, according to law.

Whatever money the Sigel & Shuster heirs get out of this, it is, for all intents and purposes, a pay-off so DC can hold the rights to Superman for all eternity (at least with copyright law being what it is today and for the foreseeable future). Considering the millions and millions of dollars DC and Time-Warner made off the character, I’m sure they can afford it.

And please let’s not paint DC (or National, as they were known at the time) as saints. They were the ones who sued Captain Marvel out of existence, remember?

Whoa whoa Jim, hang on! Classic Captain Marvel stories are the best!

I’d like to think Captain Marvel would have survived the test of time, beaten up Fredric Wertham and flown us to Mars by now.

Man, I shake my head at some of these comment threads. Let’s see what we’ve learned this time:

1. A contract is a binding contract forever and must be honored under all circumstances. And this somehow means that DC owns Superman absolutely in perpetuity even though the original sale of the rights was only for 56 years.

2. Changing the law after the fact and allowing the creators to reclaim the rights is “ex post facto” and totally unfair – but continuously extending the copyright period and applying the extended period to pre-existing deals is just fine.

3. The heirs did not do the legwork of creating Superman and are thus entitled to nothing. What is this “in-her-i-tance” thing people are talking about? Actually, the rights to Superman rest with a corporation – forever – even though the company’s workforce and ownership have completely turned over since the rights were purchased. There is, apparently, no contradiction between the first and third sentences of this paragraph.

4. The heirs are motivated by “greed” aka money and therefore their claims are illegitimate and immoral. DC/ Time-Warner is an altrusitic organization that produces Superman comics for the good of literature and the benefit of humanity, and it is not at all motivated by “greed” or money.

5. The creators asserted legal claims against DC during their lifetimes and received a settlement. This somehow precludes the creators’ heirs from asserting a *different* claim decades later. It is perfectly okay, though, for Time-Warner and other large corporations to continually lobby for more and more extensions to the copyright period.

6. The law is the law and must be upheld at all costs – except where it gives the heirs a clear right to reclaim the copyright. For the heirs, asserting a legal rights is the same thing as “sitting around looking for reasons to sue”. We all know that Time-Warner never sues anyone or brings legal action to enforce its rights.

If more people actually took the time to understand any of the issues raised by this litigation, or alternatively at least took the time to learn the facts here – I suspect many would be embarrassed by their comments. At least I hope so.

Mathes, a question for you. How many times have The Families gone back to the well and threatened DC/National/NPP/TW and been given settlements, at least two that I am aware of. Here is the definition of settlement:
“The act of adjusting or determining the dealings or disputes between persons without pursuing the matter through a trial.

In civil lawsuits, settlement is an alternative to pursuing litigation through trial. Typically, it occurs when the defendant agrees to some or all of the plaintiff’s claims and decides not to fight the matter in court. Usually, a settlement requires the defendant to pay the plaintiff some monetary amount. Popularly called settling out of court, a settlement agreement ends the litigation. Settlement is a popular option for several reasons, but a large number of cases are settled simply because defendants want to avoid the high cost of litigation. Settlement may occur before or during the early stages of a trial. In fact, simple settlements regularly take place before a lawsuit is even filed. In complex litigation, especially Class Action suits or cases involving multiple defendants, a settlement requires court approval.”

Here is the key part: “Popularly called settling out of court, a settlement agreement ends the litigation.” The families have settled. It is over. But Congress in it’s infinite wisdom creates an ex post facto clause in the copyright laws. Now Matches you are wrong when you state “Changing the law after the fact and allowing the creators to reclaim the rights is “ex post facto” and totally unfair.” No Matches, it’s not unfair, it’s unconstitutional.

Here is the current status of ex post facto laws in the united states:

“Ex post facto laws are prohibited in federal law by Article I, section 9 of the U.S. Constitution and in state law by section 10. Over the years, when deciding ex post facto cases, the United States Supreme Court has referred repeatedly to its ruling in the Calder v. Bull case of 1798, in which Justice Chase established four categories of unconstitutional ex post facto laws.

However, not all laws with ex post facto effects have been found to be unconstitutional. One current U.S. law that has an ex post facto effect is the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006. This law, which imposes new registration requirements on convicted sex offenders, gives the U.S. Attorney General the authority to apply the law retrospectively.[1] The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Smith v. Doe (2003) that forcing sex offenders to register their whereabouts at regular intervals and the posting of personal information about them on the Internet does not violate the constitutional prohibition against ex post facto laws, because compulsory registration of offenders who completed their sentences before new laws requiring compliance went into effect does not constitute a punishment.[2]

Another example is the so-called Lautenburg law where firearms prohibitions were imposed on those convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence offenses and subjects of restraining orders (which do not require a criminal conviction). These individuals can now be sentenced to up to 10 years in a federal prison for possession of a firearm, regardless of whether or not the weapon was legally possessed at the time the law was passed. Among those that it is claimed the law has affected is a father who was convicted of a misdemeanor of child abuse despite claims that he had only spanked his child, since anyone convicted of child abuse now faces a lifetime firearms prohibition. The law has been legally upheld because it is considered regulatory, not punitive – it is a status offense. ”

So lets look at an example. Let’s say you are in a car accident and hit another vehicle, and total it. It turns out that it’s a one of a kind vehicle that the other driver had just created, and it runs on milk. You don’t have insurance and decide to settle out of court with the owner of the other vehicle, and he agress to $50,000. Twenty years from now the owner of the milk machine discovers that the vehicle you totalled is now considered as the answer to the energy crisis and worth $250,000,000. So he comes back and sues you because, even though at the time neither party knew what the value of the vehicle would be 20 years in the furture, the value of the now destroyed vehicle had now accrued. You don’t have the money, so he forces you into bankruptcy.

So, is that fair? You settled, SETTLED!, the initial lawsuit, and both parties signed off on it. Is it fair that 20 years later the creator of this once in a lifetime vehicle comes back and sues you? If you think it is, then you really need to think through the disaster that kind of law enforcement would create.

Here is a link to an article that stresses that while the Consitution and the Supreme Court have often viewed ex post facto rulings as being purely of a criminal nature, a strong case can be made that they also apply to civil laws.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj15n2-3-4.html

Jim, my use of “ex post facto” above was meant primarily as sarcasm. Sorry if that wasn’t clear. I don’t really believe that civil laws can be considered “ex post facto”. The whole idea behind prohibiting ex post facto laws was to prevent people from being criminally prosecuted for made-up crimes, and obviously we’re not dealing with anything like that.

But leaving that aside – let’s accept the premise that the law upon which the heirs are relying is the civil (and moral) equivalent of an ex post facto law, and is thus flawed, invalid, or morally wrong. The law upon which the heirs rely is the SAME law upon which DC relies in asserting any continuing copyright at all. But for those changes to the law the original deal between DC and the creators would have expired in 1994, and Superman would now be in the public domain. One can argue that it’s bogus for the heirs to be given this right after the fact, but that line of logic doesn’t end with “so DC gets Superman forever”. It ends with Superman in the public domain and DC having no copyright at all.

The example you gave is a fine one, but not entirely applicable to the facts of this case. The claim that the heirs are asserting now is not the same claim that was settled previously. It’s a new claim created by a change in the law. The better analogy would be if I hit the milk-machine creator AGAIN in 20 years and claim he can’t sue because he settled the first claim. They’re two separate claims that happen to involve the same character.

The fundamental mistake people keep making in looking at this case is assuming that the heirs are just making the same claim over and over, settling and then bringing the same claim again. That is manifestly NOT what has happened here.

The arguments here by Jim Durdan have hit some kind of internet low in logic and facts.

The “Families” of Siegel and Shuster have not sued DC multiple times and taken multiple settlements. Siegel sued once over an alleged contract violation. He won a split decision and based on what was probably bad advice from his lawyer, settled on the part he won. That was in 1947 and it had nothing to do with the issues currently being litigated. The Siegel family has not made a lawsuit settlement with DC since and neither Shuster nor his family have ever sued.

The rest of his argument is that somehow the Siegels can’t sue because of a silly interpretation of the law that even the Time Warner lawyers haven’t bothered to argue. Obviously if it had any validity they would have used it and ended this a long time ago. Durdan links to an irrelevant interpretation of ex post facto rulings from the Cato Institute, which is a Libertarian think tank that has a pretty bad track record at having any court agree with its view of any law.

The reason this is not settled law is that the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Law which made copyright reclamation suits possible specifically said that suits like this were legal. The extension changed the copyright laws and prevented copyrights (like Superman’s) that would have expired from expiring. This helped companies like DC and Disney but the act also stated that because they’d changed the rules, people who had sold copyrights under the assumption that those copyrights would expire on certain dates should have the right to rescind those transfers. The act specifically states that those parties are not necessarily bound by old agreements that they signed thinking the old expiration dates would apply.

You can call it a legal loophole if you want but Time Warner has its lawyers exploit every possible legal loophole that will make the company richer. Why is it so awful that someone else exploits one? I don’t even think it’s a loophole. It’s just a fair way to divide up the bonus years of the copyright that Congress granted. But even if it is a loophole, that is how business operates. DC retains ownership of most of its properties because of those kinds of legal technicalities.

The rest of the meanspiritedness here and other places on the internet is horrible. Jerry Siegel’s widow is in her nineties. I can’t believe there are Superman fans so terrified of DC losing a few dollars on Superman that they want to tell this woman to “go get a job and stop leeching off someone else’s work”. My mother lives in a home that my late father built. I suppose you think she should be out on the street. If one of your relatives dies and leaves you something of value are you going to refuse it and instead let it go to total strangers?

Why is it so horrible if the Siegel family gets some money off Superman? People who make Superman movies or create Superman comics including the bad ones have made a lot more money off the property than Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster did for creating the character in the first place. This whole court case will end with some division of money. DC will go right on publishing Superman but they will pay the Siegels something and share future money with them and it will not harm Superman any more than it harms Teen Titans because DC shares the money with Marvin Wolfman and George Perez. This case has only dragged on this long because Time Warner is trying to share as little as possible.

Thanks Jeremy. Time Warner is probably at the stage now where they don’t care how much it costs they just don’t want to lose.

Warning: going completely off on a Captain Marvel tangent here.

Jim,

Would Captain Marvel have survived the test of time? Hard to say, with most of the Golden Age superheroes fading away in the late 40s and 50s… But it’s certainly plausible. When Captain Marvel Adventures and Whiz Comics ended in 1953, they had already outlasted other major super-heroes such as Green Lantern, Flash and Captain America (who were all revived or revamped later, obviously) by several years. It’s fair to say the character had staying power. And while Fawcett Comics closed up shop, their parent company Fawcett Publications continued for decades after. If not for the lawsuit, perhaps the character would’ve been reinvigorated by the Silver Age. We’ll never know.

And yes, I’ve read a few of the old Cap stories. I don’t agree that they’re “bad” – in fact, in my opinion, they hold up better than the Superman stories of the same era. But that’s just my taste. Feel free not to agree.

“If the case had no legal merit then, why did the courts agree with the National/DC lawsuit?”

Well, I can only offer my opinion. I agree with Fawcett’s argument, that the differences in essential plot and concept elements (Captain Marvel’s alter-ego was a child, not an adult; his powers were magic-based, not science-based) outweigned the similarities (super-strength, super-speed, invulnerability, a skin-tight costume with a cape, and a news reporter alter ego), meaning that Captain Marvel was not an infringement of National (DC)’s copyrighted character, but a property in its own right. But again, that’s my opinion, and Judge Hand thought otherwise.

I mean, “super-strength, super-speed, invulnerability, a skin-tight costume with a cape, and a news reporter alter ego” is pretty generic.

Consider also, that Action Comics #1 (1st Superman) had a cover date of June 1938; that Whiz Comics #2 (1st Captain Marvel) had a cover date of Feb 1940; and that Fawcett didn’t receive a cease-and-desist letter until June 1941. Now, I know that cover dates and actual publication dates are not the same thing, but apparently, for roughly a year and a half, DC saw no reason to take legal action against Fawcett. What happened between (roughly) Feb 1940 and June 1941? Captain Marvel became incredibly popular; was the first superhero to be adapted into film and was now outselling Superman. So if you ask me, this was less about maintaining their copyright, and more like an attempt to eliminate a competitor.

The Siegel and Shuster families being able to sue again, if copyright is extended yet again, is maybe the only buffer to make corporations think twice about extending the copyright laws indefinitely. So, yeah, I hope they are able to sue again.

As a side note, as I learned from the guy who runs the local comic shop Regarding the Fawcett Captain Marvel.

Fawcett actually WON that lawsuit, but DC had kept that lawsuit going for so long they essentially raped Fawcett of all of it’s money, so it went bankrupt, and guess who snapped up the characters and universe? That’s right. DC comics. Coincidence? I think not.

If the families based new stories of Action Comics #1 and the first two weeks of the newspaper dailies.

Siegel and Shuster’s Original Superman

Superman/ Clark Kent/ Kal-L
Lois Lane
Editor ( I am guessing that is George Taylor since he was the editor of The Daily Star)
The Kents (John and Mary- Mary is listed as Ma Kent in Action #1)
Jor-L
Lora
Krypton
The Daily Star

Basically Earth 2 Superman or Max Fleischer Superman. Excluding or not using :Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, Lana lang, Lex Luthor ( although later the families could argue for LUTHOR who had red hair in 1940),Metropolis, Smallville,Kal-El, Jor-El, Lara, Jonathan and Martha Kent, Supergirl, Kryptonite, the trademarked “S”, Superman powers like flight ( Superman leaped long distances although an arguement could be made for flight by families), x-ray vision, heat vision, super breath, super strength to lift planets, etc.could be used.

Jim, I would love to see some solid references for a lot of the things you claim because your “facts” differ from what I have learned over the years.

Yes, the Saturday Evening Post said they’d $75,000 in 1940. Siegel said that number was wrong. Even if it was right, it was a pretty small percentage of what Superman earned that year and it was not as much as they had been promised for their services.

The 1948 settlement was only with Siegel (not Siegel & Shuster) and it was over Superboy and a specific violation of Siegel’s contract. I don’t see how you can claim that the current dispute over the copyright on Superman is the same thing that was settled then. Perhaps you can quote the language of the settlement agreement.

Also, the 1948 case was not settled in court as you say. It was settled out of court after the court ruled in favor of Siegel on Superboy.

Your above phrasing makes it sound like Siegel left comics shortly after that. Actually, he worked in comics until the late sixties. He even wrote for DC again around 1958-1966.

You say Siegel and Shuster sued DC in 1978 and settled for a pension with the efforts of publisher Carmine Infantino. That is all wrong. First of all, they dropped their lawsuit in the early seventies. Second, the pension deal was not done with the participation of Carmine Infantino. It was done by the parent corporation over his objections. Third, it was not to settle any lawsuit since they had dropped it long before then. It was to stop DC from being humiliated by publicity about how badly they had treated the creators of Superman. Fourth, it was signed in December of 1975 so you even have the year wrong.

The main flaw in your logic is that you keep arguing that these matters were settled. Obviously, they were not settled in past agreements. If they had been, the suit would have been thrown out of court a long time ago.

You say that Siegel signed something in 1978 that should have prevented him or his heirs from suing again. Please quote the specific language in the settlement that said that.

Perhaps you think that if someone signs any deal with a company over anything then they should never be allowed to sue them over anything even if the laws change and even over matters not covered in the original settlement. It seems pretty obvious to me that the Siegels are still in court and winning victories because the past agreements did not settle matters forever.

Most of the briefs in the current matter are available online. Can you point to any one in which the Time Warner lawyers have tried to even argue that any past settlements meant that copyright extensions which did not exist at the time were settled matters?

You ask if the descendants of Siegel and Shuster are going to sue again in 60 years. If the copyright is extended that far, DC and then Time Warner will have gotten ownership of Superman for more than 120 years based on a contract that was supposed to only give them 27 before they lost the property to public domain. I am kind of mystified why you think it’s okay for a company to profit that much from changes in the law but horrible if the creators of the property or their heirs try to profit a little from all those extensions.

least chemical agreement new called significantly

“You say that Siegel signed something in 1978 that should have prevented him or his heirs from suing again. Please quote the specific language in the settlement that said that.”

Siegel simply could not have signed away his family’s right to recapture the copyrights…. because those were not his rights to sign away. While we’re speaking of the family as Siegel’s “heirs”, the right of recapture is not something that Siegel could choose who gets. If he had named me in his will as the inheritor of the right of recapture, I’d get bupkis. The law specifically dictates that family members get this right for the work of a deceased creator. Siegel had no ability to sign awy those rights.

I am disappointed in you, Jim. I asked for some specific citations for things you assert here as fact and you told me to google and find them for myself. That is a dodge because you have no solid references.

I can google any subject and find lots of misinformation. I can find posts by people who don’t know what they’re talking about on almost any subject. That does not verify or prove anything. Especially in the matter of the Superman lawsuit, there is a lot of misinformation on the internet. That is why I asked you to cite where you got certain information and you have dodged doing so.

I think this proves that you really don’t know what you’re writing about here. You write about how certain matters were settled in past litigation or settlements but you have not read those settlements. You are merely projecting your view of how you think the law should work on what really happened. In your world, the current lawsuit should not have been possible so you insist that past settlements correspond to that.

This is why we are not agreeing. I am trying to deal with what has actually happened and how the law really works, not how I wish it would work.

Siegel and Shuster may have legally signed an agreement in 1938 that sold Superman but the law is quite explicit that that agreement does not cover the years of the copyright extension and that the heirs can reclaim. You think they should not be allowed to so you are pretending the law does not say what it says. There are plenty of laws I think are wrong but I recognize that I have to deal with them as they are, not as I wish they were.

You write, “Why are you so anti business? Why do you feel it’s right for a company to lose it’s just and legal copyright because of a whim in Congress.” I am not anti business. I work for a business, a rather large one. I think Time Warner can easily share with the Siegels and still be a very healthy and profitable company.

You think they should have it all. You even think they should have more years than they originally bargained for. I would suggest that I am not anti business but that you are pro business to the detriment of the individual.

I do not think all evils are due to big business. That is not my position at all. I do think it is possible in a given situation for a corporation to be in the wrong? Don’t you?

You write, “You yourself state that their have been previous settlements. So why are these legal documents no longer worth the paper they are written on?” The problem here is that you have never seen these documents. You are merely assuming they say what you wish they said. I think the obvious conclusion is that they did not settle the current issues. The 1948 settlement certainly did not address the question of what would happen if twenty years later, Congress extended copyrights. If it had, the current lawsuit could not have happened.

I did read the Cato Institute piece you linked to and I thought it was nonsense. I think most of what the Cato Institute asserts is nonsense, especially their unrealistic views of global warming. I think they twist the views of the framers of the Constitution to justify a lot of prejudices.

In any case, we do not live in a world where the Cato view of the law prevails. If Time Warner had a chance to seize a piece of a property worth billions, they would not shrink from trying to because of how the law should be. They would exploit the way the law is to try and make more money. I don’t see why you think individuals should not be able to play the same game.

I do not see what the laws on gay marriage have to do with any of this. In our legal system, laws are occasionally overturned or reversed. Some of them should be. I bet there are laws right now that you would change if you had the chance. There were court decisions and laws for years that said minorities did not have the rights of whites. Those laws were overturned. Do you want to argue that those matters had been settled and that it was a mulligan to go back and change them?

For the record, I think gay marriage should be legal. I think the law has been back and forth on this and someone could argue that every change is an ex post facto law changing something that has already been settled.

My main disappointment in you, Jim, is when you write, “Please, if you wish to cite where I have made factual errors then have at it, but I ask that you find facts that contradict mine and post links to them.”

I asked you to do this and you told me to go google it for myself. This is obviously because you can’t back up your version of history with any links to credible sources.

You base most of your case on assertions about a “1978″ settlement of a lawsuit filed by Siegel and Shuster. Post a link to a credible source (not some anonymous person) that shows there was a settlement in 1978 of a lawsuit by Siegel and Shuster. And then post a link to a credible source that quotes or even summarizes how that settlement pertains to the current lawsuit.

If you can’t, then your entire argument is invalid.

“I dare any of the impotent fanboys…”

Not that I need it, but for those who do there are pills to take care of that now.

Jeremy my source regarding the amount of revenue the Siegels have received is based on the logicality of the number of times these crooks have been in and out of the courts – after the ruling of 1999 I doubt they would have agreed to it if they weren’t happy.

As for “whatever is convenient for me to believe” what about “whatever is convenient for YOU to read”!?!? I also clearly state that National and Warners should have done the right thing in the first place. I think they’re both as bad as each other and it just goes to show how litigation mad the States has become – so much for “Truth, Justice and the American Way!”

And yes as a fan I AM suffering. Yes I’m reading comics and watching Smallville but I would also like to enjoy the possibility of a REAL Superman movie reboot a la Batman Returns – not the disappointment that was Superman Returns.

Give the plaintiffs all that they ask for, which is the rights to Superman of the Golden Age, his costume,George Taylor, Eben and Sarah Kent,maybe even Lois Lane.

Other writers created the Superman we know today with little input from Siegel & Shuster and no input at all from the parties of the lawsuit. His origin is substantially different as is his costume and his powers. Credit the creators with the original invention, but not the refinemnts, find a number and make the sale stick this time.

Otherwise, Superman is done as a franchise.

Of course, if this makes it to the Supreme Court on appeal, guess what? The plaintiffs will probably end up having to pay Time-Warner’s legal costs on top of losing everything they won. The pro Big Biz Supreme Court tends to make 5-4 rulings on that basis.

OK Jeremy I’m going to try this one more time. Everything I use in quotes are from articles available on the net. Take the first sentence of any of them and google them, it will bring you to the article.

This page is not part of a law review study, it is however where fans are trying to take common sense solutions and apply them to a situation where the Congress and the Courts have so muddied the waters that common sense seems to have been turned on it’s ear.

So Jeremy if you wish to show evidence that I do have factual sources, then please do so. But it’s apparent to me that your use of logic is selective. The Gay Marriage debate in California is very much like we are talking about, except it didn’t take 60 years to develop it too months. Please answer, is what happened in California right or wrong?

As for you dismissal of Rob’s point about the Superman movie, you either did not understand his point, or you haven’t read the news. I’ll give you this link, since you seem to have issues with Google:
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=22544

Bottom line, TW needs to get a Supes movie into production by 2011. It appears they wanted to do a Superman version of Batman Begins. Because of the latest nebulous ruling by the courts the whole origin story may be off limits. Catch 22.

Also here is another quote for you “Give the families several million and make them go away forever.”

Guess who wrote that?

And Jeremy, may I suggest that if TWC is your cable company, you immediately cancel your cable, stop buying all DC Books. Never use AOL, AIM, or send emails to anyone with an AOL address.

As a matter of fact here is the list of all TW subsidiaries:

A
AOL
Adult Swim
Allied Artists Pictures Corporation
Associated Artists Productions

B
Bickley-Warren Productions
Boomerang (Latin American TV channel)
Boomerang (TV channel)

C
CNN International Asia Pacific
CNN International Europe/Middle East/Africa
CNN International North America
CNN International South Asia
CNN International in Latin America
The CW Television Network
Cartoon Network (India)
Cartoon Network (Pakistan)
Cartoon Network (United States)
Cartoon Network Studios
Castle Rock Entertainment
China Entertainment Television
Cinemax
The Comedy Channel (United States)
CompuServe

E
Entertainment Weekly

F
Fine Line Features
First National
Fortune (magazine)
Full Moon Records (US)

H
HBO Films
Hanna-Barbera
HBO Asia
HLN (TV network)

I
IPC Media

K
Kalem Company
Kinney National Company

L
Lorimar Productions
Lorimar-Telepictures

M
MapQuest
Midway Games
Mirabilis (company)
Momlogic
Monogram Pictures
Monolith Productions

N
National General Pictures
New Line Cinema
New Line Television
Novamute Records
Nullsoft

O
Open Directory Project

P
People (magazine)
Picturehouse (company)
Pogo (TV channel)
Programs on Cartoon Network India
Programs on POGO

R
Raw Feed
Real (TV channel)
Real World Records

S
SHOUTcast
Seven Arts Productions
Singingfish
Sixsevenine
Snowblind Studios
Sports Illustrated
Sunset (magazine)
Sunset Productions

T
Template:TBS
Telepictures
Time (magazine)
Template:Time Warner
Time Warner Interactive Entertainment
TMZ.com
Toonami (UK & Ireland)
Turner Communications Group
Turner Entertainment
Turner Program Services

U
Uncut (magazine)

V
Vitagraph Studios

W
The WB Television Network
Template:WB
The WB 100+ Station Group
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Animation
Warner Bros. Cartoons
Warner Bros. Family Entertainment
Warner Bros. International Television
Warner Bros. Studio Store
Warner Bros. Television
Warner Bros. Television Distribution
Warner Bros.-Seven Arts
Warner Channel
Warner Communications
Warner Home Video
Warner Independent Pictures
Warner Music Vision
Warner Premiere
Who (magazine)
World Championship Wrestling

Y
Yachting (magazine)

Z
Zuda Comics

Stick it to them!

Again, it’s all part of the mind set that Big Buisness is, by it’s very nature, evil. Truth be told, while I think it’s in the best interest of TW to make the plantiffs go away, I have no problem by nature with what TW is doing. THey are protecting their copyright.

To Brent Clark Rogers, how everyone thinks copyright should work is a separate matter from how it does. The company and people who deal with it have to deal with how copyright works not how they wish it worked.

The Siegels do not seem to be going after copyrights of other characters Jerry created yet. The only ones that are eligible for copyright reclamation are the early ones like Slam Bradley. As far as I know they have not claimed that but these lawsuits are very expensive and it is probably not cost effective to spend the kind of money it would take to reclaim a property of little value. They simply may not have the money to claim a copyright that they can’t turn around and make some money off to defray the legal costs. The Spectre might be worth trying to get back but I don’t think it is time yet to reclaim that one. Maybe in a few years.

Wake up people , its business …. plain and simple , as a retailer i really dont care who wrote or created a story as long as it sells … thats right ask any retailer … all we want is the money , all this crap about creator rights is just that … crap . Its called work for hire , check out a newspaper or magazine , those writers get paid a wage … so should comic writers and artists , ditch the big egos and get writers in who want to work , not ones who want prissy little fanboys heads up their butts . Nuff said !!!!!

“… a script for a Superman story that Siegel and Shuster would later adapt for Action Comics #4″

so which lawyer-y type would like to explain how AC#4 ceases to be a work for hire if the people doing said work for hire were recycling old drafts?

I mean, didn’t they turn in that month’s work saying “here’s our work for hire” instead of saying “oh, we also have an existing item owned by us that we’d like you to publish for us.” Shouldn’t that have been pretty much settled at the time it was done?

Seriously.

It was sold for $138.
In a sleazy, underhanded, trick way.
If Wheeler and Donaldson had ripped YOUR grandparents off, fanboys, you would be suing too.

Think of these as a website

when you make a website do you copy the images and the code of a other website no why because they are not yours and you can get sue

Siegel and Shuster families wanted the rights to superman they shouldn’t of Sold him But guess what they did sell him which mean they gave up all ownership of the character

Superman is one of the cases where it probably would have been o.k. for it to lapse into the public domain. DC still would hold the copyrights on a whole bunch of stuff that makes up the mythos plus all the trademarks. You probably could do some prose novels with the original idea without tripping over copyright and trademark, but good luck trying to do anything visually.

That’s probably doubly so for Mickey Mouse. A plucky mouse that looks nothing like Disney’s trademarked version is probably not a commercially viable one.

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