Chris Arant, Newsarama; MARVEL & Others Sued Over X-MEN: THE ANIMATED SERIES Theme Song Alleging Copyright Infringement - Report
"Marvel Entertainment, the Walt Disney Company, and others are being sued
for copyright infringement over the 1990s theme song to X-Men: The Animated Series due to its similiarities to a 1980s Hungarian cop show's theme, according to TMZ.
The similarities between the two themes have been noted before online,
and now a representative from the estate of the original show's composer
has reportedly filed a lawsuit."
Showing posts with label Marvel Entertainment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marvel Entertainment. Show all posts
Monday, October 14, 2019
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Gary Friedrich's Ghost Rider lawsuit against Marvel lives on; ComicBookResources.com, 8/3/10
Kevin Melrose, ComicBookResources.com; Gary Friedrich's Ghost Rider lawsuit against Marvel lives on:
"A lawyer for Ghost Rider co-creator Gary Friedrich asserts the writer's copyright-infringement lawsuit against Marvel will proceed, despite reports in June that the action had been dismissed."
http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2010/08/gary-friedrichs-ghost-rider-lawsuit-against-marvel-lives-on/
"A lawyer for Ghost Rider co-creator Gary Friedrich asserts the writer's copyright-infringement lawsuit against Marvel will proceed, despite reports in June that the action had been dismissed."
http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2010/08/gary-friedrichs-ghost-rider-lawsuit-against-marvel-lives-on/
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Superheros [sic] Tangle in Copyright Battles; New York Times, 7/23/10
Michael Cieply, New York Times; Superheros [sic] Tangle in Copyright Battles:
"Lawyers on a Friday afternoon panel at Comic-Con were supposed to be talking about the legal challenges of social media and the battles over copyright, notably a case that involves the Walt Disney Company’s Marvel Entertainment and the heirs to the comic book artist Jack Kirby (Spider-Man among many others).
But David P. Branfman, a lawyer on the stage, first had a word of warning for anybody whose Web site carries stock photos that might belong to someone else: “Make 100 percent sure you’ve got a written license” to use the pictures, said Mr. Branfman.
Companies that own stock photos, he said, have been cracking down on sites that use their wares, demanding, in his experience, an average of $15,000 for each photo lifted from them.
That was certainly an attention-getter for the Web-friendly Comic-Con crowd. Many in the room had just raised their hands, to acknowledge having photos on sites of their own.
Moving on to the main event, Mr. Branfman and his fellow panelists said they were amazed at their ferocity on display in the disputes between Marvel and the Kirby heirs, and between Warner’s DC Comics unit and the heirs to a pair of Superman creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, .
“You don’t see that too often,” Mr. Branfman said of a recent move by Warner to file suit personally against Marc Toberoff, the lawyer who has represented heirs in both the DC and the Marvel cases.
Michael Lovitz, a lawyer who moderated the panel, suggested that attempts by the Kirby and Siegel heirs to regain ownership of copyrights would open the floodgates to similar moves by a host of comic book creators. “This is something we’re going to see more and more of, these terminations,” he said.
To judge by the crush of attendees who afterward grabbed for a written rundown on copyright termination from Mr. Branfman — he called it “The Legal Undead” — Mr. Lovitz would appear to be right."
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/superheros-tangle-in-copyright-battles/?scp=1&sq=copyright&st=cse
"Lawyers on a Friday afternoon panel at Comic-Con were supposed to be talking about the legal challenges of social media and the battles over copyright, notably a case that involves the Walt Disney Company’s Marvel Entertainment and the heirs to the comic book artist Jack Kirby (Spider-Man among many others).
But David P. Branfman, a lawyer on the stage, first had a word of warning for anybody whose Web site carries stock photos that might belong to someone else: “Make 100 percent sure you’ve got a written license” to use the pictures, said Mr. Branfman.
Companies that own stock photos, he said, have been cracking down on sites that use their wares, demanding, in his experience, an average of $15,000 for each photo lifted from them.
That was certainly an attention-getter for the Web-friendly Comic-Con crowd. Many in the room had just raised their hands, to acknowledge having photos on sites of their own.
Moving on to the main event, Mr. Branfman and his fellow panelists said they were amazed at their ferocity on display in the disputes between Marvel and the Kirby heirs, and between Warner’s DC Comics unit and the heirs to a pair of Superman creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, .
“You don’t see that too often,” Mr. Branfman said of a recent move by Warner to file suit personally against Marc Toberoff, the lawyer who has represented heirs in both the DC and the Marvel cases.
Michael Lovitz, a lawyer who moderated the panel, suggested that attempts by the Kirby and Siegel heirs to regain ownership of copyrights would open the floodgates to similar moves by a host of comic book creators. “This is something we’re going to see more and more of, these terminations,” he said.
To judge by the crush of attendees who afterward grabbed for a written rundown on copyright termination from Mr. Branfman — he called it “The Legal Undead” — Mr. Lovitz would appear to be right."
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/superheros-tangle-in-copyright-battles/?scp=1&sq=copyright&st=cse
Friday, June 18, 2010
Spider-Man Is Among the Most Wanted; New York Times, 6/17/10
Marc Lacey, New York Times; Spider-Man Is Among the Most Wanted:
"Spider-Man has successfully taken on the Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus and Venom, to name just a few of his foes over the years, but the web-spinning superhero was no match for Mexico’s federal police, who recently manhandled him and easily took him into custody.
Many piñata vendors duplicate popular children’s characters, but some companies want them to pay to do so.
In a crackdown on pirated piñatas some months ago, officials from the attorney general’s office and the federal police seized more than 100 of the papier-mâché party accessories, Spider-Man prime among them, and took into custody several real-life piñata vendors as well. The authorities said the raid was a response to a complaint filed by Marvel Entertainment, which owns the rights to the characters in question. Hulk, another Marvel character, was also overwhelmed by the men in black that day, as was Captain America.
But the story line got a twist when it turned out that the raid might have been as questionable as the piñatas that were seized. The attorney general’s office said it had no record of Marvel’s calling for such an operation, which existing law required before a raid could be conducted, and the company insists it had nothing to do with it. Federal officials later said that it was Televisa, a Mexican television conglomerate, that filed the complaint that led to the raid.
Whatever the raid’s provenance, the lawyer assisting the vendors, Fidel López García, said that it appeared to have been aimed primarily at extorting money from the vendors and commandeering their wares, not an uncommon event in Mexico. Mr. López and the vendors say that, after seizing thousands of piñatas, the police and the officials not only began selling them on the street but offered to sell them back to the vendors.
A spokeswoman for the Mexican federal prosecutors dismissed the vendors’ accusations about the raid, saying simply, “It wasn’t illegal.”
The piñata roundup created a stir in this city’s piñata-selling zones, where Spider-Man, who goes by the name Hombre Araña here, used to hang out on the sidewalk with Snow White, Mickey Mouse, SpongeBob SquarePants and Lightning McQueen, to name a few of the popular piñatas awaiting purchase.
After being forced to pay hefty fines of thousands of dollars to the attorney general’s office, some vendors have eliminated Spider-Man from their shops and others have relegated him to the back. It is not as though proprietary characters have disappeared altogether, though. On a recent afternoon, Darth Vader (Lucasfilm Ltd.) was hanging next to Ben 10 (Cartoon Network), and Princess Tiana (Disney) was in close proximity to Thomas the Tank Engine (Gullane (Thomas) Ltd.), Tigger (Disney) and Shrek (DreamWorks Animation).
Piñatas are one small corner of the counterfeiting business, which is flourishing in Mexico. “The statistics don’t lie, and we had to do something because 8 of every 10 people buy counterfeit products, and 54 percent of the products on the market are falsified,” said Arturo Zamora Jiménez, a lawmaker who advocated for a beefed-up antipiracy law that has since been adopted.
Besides depriving the government of tax revenue and siphoning profits from corporations, piracy helps to fuel organized crime, the authorities say. Mexican drug gangs have embraced the business, the government said, trafficking in such things as pirated movies, computer software and apparel.
Critics of the government maintain that only the poor will suffer from any crackdown on counterfeit goods. “Instead of creating jobs, this government pursues people who have made the decision not to join the criminal element and who look for honest work to bring bread to their homes,” said Gerardo Fernández Noraña, an opposition lawmaker.
Standing amid Dora the Explorers, Barneys and Tinker Bells, some piñata sellers said they saw nothing wrong with providing customers with what they wanted, even without permission from a foreign corporation.
“A piñata is Mexican,” said Eduardo Bejaramo, a vendor who had been detained in the raid. “It’s just newspaper with paint on it. We’re not copying music or films. We’re doing all this by hand. How can we copy if Marvel does not make piñatas?”
Down the street, another piñata vendor, who declined to be identified out of fear that his comments could prompt a follow-up raid, said he would have to go out of business if he had to pay companies to use their characters.
“Traditionally, Mexican piñatas were made in the shape of stars,” he said, meaning celestial bodies, not celebrities. “But with TV, children began wanting a piñata like what they saw on the screen.”"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/17/world/americas/17pinata.html?scp=1&sq=pinatas%20spider-man%20mexico&st=cse
"Spider-Man has successfully taken on the Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus and Venom, to name just a few of his foes over the years, but the web-spinning superhero was no match for Mexico’s federal police, who recently manhandled him and easily took him into custody.
Many piñata vendors duplicate popular children’s characters, but some companies want them to pay to do so.
In a crackdown on pirated piñatas some months ago, officials from the attorney general’s office and the federal police seized more than 100 of the papier-mâché party accessories, Spider-Man prime among them, and took into custody several real-life piñata vendors as well. The authorities said the raid was a response to a complaint filed by Marvel Entertainment, which owns the rights to the characters in question. Hulk, another Marvel character, was also overwhelmed by the men in black that day, as was Captain America.
But the story line got a twist when it turned out that the raid might have been as questionable as the piñatas that were seized. The attorney general’s office said it had no record of Marvel’s calling for such an operation, which existing law required before a raid could be conducted, and the company insists it had nothing to do with it. Federal officials later said that it was Televisa, a Mexican television conglomerate, that filed the complaint that led to the raid.
Whatever the raid’s provenance, the lawyer assisting the vendors, Fidel López García, said that it appeared to have been aimed primarily at extorting money from the vendors and commandeering their wares, not an uncommon event in Mexico. Mr. López and the vendors say that, after seizing thousands of piñatas, the police and the officials not only began selling them on the street but offered to sell them back to the vendors.
A spokeswoman for the Mexican federal prosecutors dismissed the vendors’ accusations about the raid, saying simply, “It wasn’t illegal.”
The piñata roundup created a stir in this city’s piñata-selling zones, where Spider-Man, who goes by the name Hombre Araña here, used to hang out on the sidewalk with Snow White, Mickey Mouse, SpongeBob SquarePants and Lightning McQueen, to name a few of the popular piñatas awaiting purchase.
After being forced to pay hefty fines of thousands of dollars to the attorney general’s office, some vendors have eliminated Spider-Man from their shops and others have relegated him to the back. It is not as though proprietary characters have disappeared altogether, though. On a recent afternoon, Darth Vader (Lucasfilm Ltd.) was hanging next to Ben 10 (Cartoon Network), and Princess Tiana (Disney) was in close proximity to Thomas the Tank Engine (Gullane (Thomas) Ltd.), Tigger (Disney) and Shrek (DreamWorks Animation).
Piñatas are one small corner of the counterfeiting business, which is flourishing in Mexico. “The statistics don’t lie, and we had to do something because 8 of every 10 people buy counterfeit products, and 54 percent of the products on the market are falsified,” said Arturo Zamora Jiménez, a lawmaker who advocated for a beefed-up antipiracy law that has since been adopted.
Besides depriving the government of tax revenue and siphoning profits from corporations, piracy helps to fuel organized crime, the authorities say. Mexican drug gangs have embraced the business, the government said, trafficking in such things as pirated movies, computer software and apparel.
Critics of the government maintain that only the poor will suffer from any crackdown on counterfeit goods. “Instead of creating jobs, this government pursues people who have made the decision not to join the criminal element and who look for honest work to bring bread to their homes,” said Gerardo Fernández Noraña, an opposition lawmaker.
Standing amid Dora the Explorers, Barneys and Tinker Bells, some piñata sellers said they saw nothing wrong with providing customers with what they wanted, even without permission from a foreign corporation.
“A piñata is Mexican,” said Eduardo Bejaramo, a vendor who had been detained in the raid. “It’s just newspaper with paint on it. We’re not copying music or films. We’re doing all this by hand. How can we copy if Marvel does not make piñatas?”
Down the street, another piñata vendor, who declined to be identified out of fear that his comments could prompt a follow-up raid, said he would have to go out of business if he had to pay companies to use their characters.
“Traditionally, Mexican piñatas were made in the shape of stars,” he said, meaning celestial bodies, not celebrities. “But with TV, children began wanting a piñata like what they saw on the screen.”"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/17/world/americas/17pinata.html?scp=1&sq=pinatas%20spider-man%20mexico&st=cse
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