Submission + - Superman Rights Returned to Creator's Family (nytimes.com) 2
NMerriam writes: "In a stunning legal ruling this week, the family of Jerome Siegel, one of the creators of Superman, has regained some rights to the character from DC Comics and Time-Warner.
We often hear on Slashdot about the impact of Mickey Mouse on the development of modern copyright law, but less well-known outside of the creative community is the almost equally significant impact, often in the opposite direction, that the character Superman has had. Soon after Jerome Siegel and Joseph Shuster sold their Superman character to Detective Comics for $130 it became one of the most popular and profitable characters in America, and they were recognized as having made one of the most spectacularly bad deals since the sale of Manhattan island.
Outcry in the creative community over the issue finally shamed DC Comics into providing a token annuity to both creators in the 1970s, but it also directly influenced changes to copyright law in 1976 to allow creators to regain ownership of works that had been previously sold. Equally important, the era produced a strong and lasting creators' rights movement in which certain moral rights, such as the right to be recognized as the creator of a character regardless of ownership, were more firmly established.
The financial impact of the ruling is very unclear, since it only applies to work created after the Siegels moved to have their rights restored under that same 1976 law, and will only apply to properties directly related to the Superman character. One significant question that will be keeping DC Comics/Time-Warner and Marvel executives up at night is whether a flood of artists and writers will suddenly move to regain their copyrights, and what impact that would have on the numerous big-budget comic book movies currently in production. Given that tremendous financial uncertainty, it's almost a foregone conclusion that this will be appealed and closely watched by everyone in the entertainment industry."
We often hear on Slashdot about the impact of Mickey Mouse on the development of modern copyright law, but less well-known outside of the creative community is the almost equally significant impact, often in the opposite direction, that the character Superman has had. Soon after Jerome Siegel and Joseph Shuster sold their Superman character to Detective Comics for $130 it became one of the most popular and profitable characters in America, and they were recognized as having made one of the most spectacularly bad deals since the sale of Manhattan island.
Outcry in the creative community over the issue finally shamed DC Comics into providing a token annuity to both creators in the 1970s, but it also directly influenced changes to copyright law in 1976 to allow creators to regain ownership of works that had been previously sold. Equally important, the era produced a strong and lasting creators' rights movement in which certain moral rights, such as the right to be recognized as the creator of a character regardless of ownership, were more firmly established.
The financial impact of the ruling is very unclear, since it only applies to work created after the Siegels moved to have their rights restored under that same 1976 law, and will only apply to properties directly related to the Superman character. One significant question that will be keeping DC Comics/Time-Warner and Marvel executives up at night is whether a flood of artists and writers will suddenly move to regain their copyrights, and what impact that would have on the numerous big-budget comic book movies currently in production. Given that tremendous financial uncertainty, it's almost a foregone conclusion that this will be appealed and closely watched by everyone in the entertainment industry."
