Michael Cieply, New York Times; A Comics Clash in the East:
"It appears that New York, not Los Angeles, will be the battleground for a supersize legal contest between the Marvel Entertainment unit of the Walt Disney Company and heirs of the comic book genius Jack Kirby.
When last seen in these pages, the Kirby heirs and Marvel had squared off in the federal courts of both New York and Los Angeles. Marvel first filed suit in the Southern District of New York, asking the court to confirm Disney’s ownership of comic book characters like the Incredible Hulk and the X-Men, despite Mr. Kirby’s work on them. The Kirbys fired back in the Central District of California, asserting, among other things, the right to reclaim copyrights to many of those characters.
On Tuesday, however, the Kirbys filed notice of dismissal of their complaint, closing the California case. Marc Toberoff, a lawyer who represents the family, did not immediately respond to a query about the dismissal.
But the legal battle continues to rage in New York, where the Kirbys in April filed a 29-page response to Marvel, and a counterclaim that insists on their right to terminate the copyrights, on the return of some Kirby artwork said to be in Marvel’s possession and on damages yet to be determined.
Marvel and the Kirbys have since been slugging at each other with dueling declarations and motions in the New York court, portending a long, dark struggle for control of a comic book universe on which much of Hollywood has come to depend."
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/a-comics-clash-in-the-east/?scp=1&sq=jack%20kirby&st=cse
Showing posts with label heirs of comic book artist Jack Kirby. Show all posts
Showing posts with label heirs of comic book artist Jack Kirby. Show all posts
Monday, July 12, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
Kirby family attorneys respond to Marvel lawsuit; ComicBookResources.com, 1/9/10
Kevin Melrose, ComicBookResources.com; Kirby family attorneys respond to Marvel lawsuit:
"Attorneys for the heirs of Jack Kirby call Marvel's assertion that the late artist's contributions were work made for hire "a standard claim predictably made by comic book companies to deprive artists, writers and other talent of all rights in their work."
The statement comes in response to a lawsuit filed Friday by Marvel asking for a judge to invalidate 45 copyright-termination notices issued in September related to such creations as the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, Thor, The Avengers, the X-Men and Spider-Man.
Marvel maintains that Kirby's work for the company was "for hire," invalidating the claims of his four children.
However, a press release issued late Friday by Kirby attorneys Toberoff & Associates points out that Marvel was unsuccessful when it made a similar argument in its legal battle with Joe Simon concerning Captain America.
"The truth is that Jack Kirby was his own man," the release states. "Like so many artists in the fledgling comic book industry of the late 1950's/early 1960's, Kirby worked with Marvel out of his own house as a free-lancer with no employment contract, no financial or other security, nor any other indicia of employment. ... Kirby's wonderful creations, which leapt from the page, were not Marvel's 'assignments,' but were instead authored by Kirby under his own steam and then published by Marvel. It was not until 1972 that Kirby by contract granted Marvel the copyrights to his works. It is to this grant that the Kirby family's statutory notices of termination apply."
According to Toberoff & Associates, the Kirby terminations would become effective beginning in 2014. However, it's unclear to which property that date refers. (What notable Kirby co-creations debuted at Marvel in 1958?)
When Congress increased the duration of copyright, lawmakers included a provision that, after a lengthy waiting period, permits authors or their heirs or estates to terminate the grant of rights. However, if the property is determined to be "work made for hire," the copyright would belong to the company that commissioned it."
http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2010/01/kirby-family-attorneys-respond-to-marvel-lawsuit/
"Attorneys for the heirs of Jack Kirby call Marvel's assertion that the late artist's contributions were work made for hire "a standard claim predictably made by comic book companies to deprive artists, writers and other talent of all rights in their work."
The statement comes in response to a lawsuit filed Friday by Marvel asking for a judge to invalidate 45 copyright-termination notices issued in September related to such creations as the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, Thor, The Avengers, the X-Men and Spider-Man.
Marvel maintains that Kirby's work for the company was "for hire," invalidating the claims of his four children.
However, a press release issued late Friday by Kirby attorneys Toberoff & Associates points out that Marvel was unsuccessful when it made a similar argument in its legal battle with Joe Simon concerning Captain America.
"The truth is that Jack Kirby was his own man," the release states. "Like so many artists in the fledgling comic book industry of the late 1950's/early 1960's, Kirby worked with Marvel out of his own house as a free-lancer with no employment contract, no financial or other security, nor any other indicia of employment. ... Kirby's wonderful creations, which leapt from the page, were not Marvel's 'assignments,' but were instead authored by Kirby under his own steam and then published by Marvel. It was not until 1972 that Kirby by contract granted Marvel the copyrights to his works. It is to this grant that the Kirby family's statutory notices of termination apply."
According to Toberoff & Associates, the Kirby terminations would become effective beginning in 2014. However, it's unclear to which property that date refers. (What notable Kirby co-creations debuted at Marvel in 1958?)
When Congress increased the duration of copyright, lawmakers included a provision that, after a lengthy waiting period, permits authors or their heirs or estates to terminate the grant of rights. However, if the property is determined to be "work made for hire," the copyright would belong to the company that commissioned it."
http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2010/01/kirby-family-attorneys-respond-to-marvel-lawsuit/
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Musicians Starting To Assert Copyright Termination Rights Against Record Labels; Techdirt, 10/9/09
Mike Masnick, Techdirt; Musicians Starting To Assert Copyright Termination Rights Against Record Labels:
"There's been a lot of attention recently to the news that the heirs of comic book artist Jack Kirby are alerting companies of plans to take back the copyright on various Kirby characters, using the termination rights in the Copyright Act. This followed a very long and drawn out lawsuit involving a similar attempt over Superman. The details are really complex, but copyright law allows the original creator (or heirs if that creator has passed away) certain opportunities to basically negate a deal that was signed early on to hand over the copyright on certain works. The idea was to help protect artists who signed bad deals, but in practice, it's just been a total mess.
Still, given the success of the Superman saga in getting at least some of the copyrights back, suddenly lots of people are looking to see what other copyrights can be reclaimed. Apparently, a bunch of musicians are now lining up to try to regain their rights from the labels starting in 2013 (the first year musical works are eligible). As the article notes, with record labels still too clueless to figure out how to successfully build business models around new acts, many still rely on sales of old music to bring in a lot of their revenue. If the labels lose the copyrights on much of that music... well... let's just say suddenly The Pirate Bay may be the least of their concerns."
http://www.techdirt.com/
"There's been a lot of attention recently to the news that the heirs of comic book artist Jack Kirby are alerting companies of plans to take back the copyright on various Kirby characters, using the termination rights in the Copyright Act. This followed a very long and drawn out lawsuit involving a similar attempt over Superman. The details are really complex, but copyright law allows the original creator (or heirs if that creator has passed away) certain opportunities to basically negate a deal that was signed early on to hand over the copyright on certain works. The idea was to help protect artists who signed bad deals, but in practice, it's just been a total mess.
Still, given the success of the Superman saga in getting at least some of the copyrights back, suddenly lots of people are looking to see what other copyrights can be reclaimed. Apparently, a bunch of musicians are now lining up to try to regain their rights from the labels starting in 2013 (the first year musical works are eligible). As the article notes, with record labels still too clueless to figure out how to successfully build business models around new acts, many still rely on sales of old music to bring in a lot of their revenue. If the labels lose the copyrights on much of that music... well... let's just say suddenly The Pirate Bay may be the least of their concerns."
http://www.techdirt.com/
Friday, September 25, 2009
Unpacking The Kirby Reclamation Case; Comic Book Resources, 9/25/09
Kiel Phegley, Comic Book Resources; Unpacking The Kirby Reclamation Case:
"From the Fantastic Four to Iron Man and even to Spider-Man (a character most comics historians generally don't attribute to Kirby's pen beyond a possible hand in design), almost the entirety of what many fans both hardcore and casual would consider the core of the Marvel Universe are named in the papers, which were served both to Marvel Entertainment, their prospective buyer the Disney Corporation and Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures and more companies who have profited from major adaptations of the Marvel characters.
However, while the idea that the Kirby estate may regain a piece of the copyrights for the superheroes has kept talk and speculation high, only a small part of the conversation has gotten to the heart of what's at stake in the filing. While part of this comes from fact that very little about the case has made it to the public eye just yet (when reached via e-mail by CBR, the Kirby's attorney Marc Toberoff declined to comment), many of the issues surrounding copyright law and this case in particular can be confusing to those without law degrees. "In reading some of the articles that are out there, I keep wanting to send notes to people saying, 'No, that's not right,'" laughed intellectual property lawyer and comic rights expert Michael Lovitz of Los Angeles firm Buchalter Nemer. CBR contacted Lovitz (who aside from hosting the annual "Comic Book Law School" panels at Comic-Con International in San Diego also represents comic artists like Colleen Doran and Bob Layton) to help parse out the details of the Kirbys' attempt at reclaiming rights from Marvel.
Lovitz stressed that, at this point, there is no lawsuit involved in the proceedings, and for now neither side has to do much of anything for a number of years. The notice of reclamation filed by the Kirby family only indicates that they do intend to lay claim to a share of the Marvel characters once the initial period of copyright would have ended, which for the individual heroes and villains in question could fall somewhere between 2017 and 2019. "And then they could exercise their rights for the remainder of the extended period [if they win]. They could sell it to the same people, sell it to someone else or do something with it themselves."
"The way the trademark statute is set up, each time the law was rewritten and the term of protection extended, there was an addition that said, 'We recognize that when a creator goes to a big company and sells a property to them, they're not in the best bargaining position,'" Lovitz explained, citing the current case of Jerry Siegel's family over the rights to he and Joe Shuster's Superman as a prime example. "They made an original bargain back then for 56 years of protection. If I write a novel and sell it to [you as a company] back in the '30s, I know the maximum amount of time you'll be able to capitalize on it is 56 years, and I take that into consideration when I make the bargain with you. What the people who lobbied congress said was, 'That's fine, but you're extending from 56 to 75 and then later 95 years of protection for those older works. They only bargained for 56, so you should give the original creators the ability to terminate the transfer.' That's what's going on here: a termination of the transfer of rights."
The major difference between the Kirby case and the Siegel case (which, since its moved into an actual lawsuit with Warner Brothers, has been handled with much success by Toberoff) is that in the case of Superman no one ever argued that Siegel and Shuster had not created the character independently and then sold it to DC....
However, the Kirby case holds many more complications as the process of figuring out what exactly the family might be owed involves placing a concrete legal answer onto one of the great comic fan debates of all time: Who exactly created what and when at Marvel Comics?...
Ultimately, the future of the legal rights of Jack Kirby and Marvel both will make for exciting reading for comics fans and legal types, especially since the future may only hold more and more cases of creators and their families trying to reclaim their classic characters. "You always read these little comments of people saying, 'How interesting that in ten years you could have Time Warner doing a Spider-Man movie and Disney doing a Superman movie?' " laughed Lovitz. "And how ironic that the company that was one of the biggest proponents of the copyright extension, Disney, may find itself being burned because of those extensions that gave in the rights of reversion?""
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=23063
"From the Fantastic Four to Iron Man and even to Spider-Man (a character most comics historians generally don't attribute to Kirby's pen beyond a possible hand in design), almost the entirety of what many fans both hardcore and casual would consider the core of the Marvel Universe are named in the papers, which were served both to Marvel Entertainment, their prospective buyer the Disney Corporation and Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures and more companies who have profited from major adaptations of the Marvel characters.
However, while the idea that the Kirby estate may regain a piece of the copyrights for the superheroes has kept talk and speculation high, only a small part of the conversation has gotten to the heart of what's at stake in the filing. While part of this comes from fact that very little about the case has made it to the public eye just yet (when reached via e-mail by CBR, the Kirby's attorney Marc Toberoff declined to comment), many of the issues surrounding copyright law and this case in particular can be confusing to those without law degrees. "In reading some of the articles that are out there, I keep wanting to send notes to people saying, 'No, that's not right,'" laughed intellectual property lawyer and comic rights expert Michael Lovitz of Los Angeles firm Buchalter Nemer. CBR contacted Lovitz (who aside from hosting the annual "Comic Book Law School" panels at Comic-Con International in San Diego also represents comic artists like Colleen Doran and Bob Layton) to help parse out the details of the Kirbys' attempt at reclaiming rights from Marvel.
Lovitz stressed that, at this point, there is no lawsuit involved in the proceedings, and for now neither side has to do much of anything for a number of years. The notice of reclamation filed by the Kirby family only indicates that they do intend to lay claim to a share of the Marvel characters once the initial period of copyright would have ended, which for the individual heroes and villains in question could fall somewhere between 2017 and 2019. "And then they could exercise their rights for the remainder of the extended period [if they win]. They could sell it to the same people, sell it to someone else or do something with it themselves."
"The way the trademark statute is set up, each time the law was rewritten and the term of protection extended, there was an addition that said, 'We recognize that when a creator goes to a big company and sells a property to them, they're not in the best bargaining position,'" Lovitz explained, citing the current case of Jerry Siegel's family over the rights to he and Joe Shuster's Superman as a prime example. "They made an original bargain back then for 56 years of protection. If I write a novel and sell it to [you as a company] back in the '30s, I know the maximum amount of time you'll be able to capitalize on it is 56 years, and I take that into consideration when I make the bargain with you. What the people who lobbied congress said was, 'That's fine, but you're extending from 56 to 75 and then later 95 years of protection for those older works. They only bargained for 56, so you should give the original creators the ability to terminate the transfer.' That's what's going on here: a termination of the transfer of rights."
The major difference between the Kirby case and the Siegel case (which, since its moved into an actual lawsuit with Warner Brothers, has been handled with much success by Toberoff) is that in the case of Superman no one ever argued that Siegel and Shuster had not created the character independently and then sold it to DC....
However, the Kirby case holds many more complications as the process of figuring out what exactly the family might be owed involves placing a concrete legal answer onto one of the great comic fan debates of all time: Who exactly created what and when at Marvel Comics?...
Ultimately, the future of the legal rights of Jack Kirby and Marvel both will make for exciting reading for comics fans and legal types, especially since the future may only hold more and more cases of creators and their families trying to reclaim their classic characters. "You always read these little comments of people saying, 'How interesting that in ten years you could have Time Warner doing a Spider-Man movie and Disney doing a Superman movie?' " laughed Lovitz. "And how ironic that the company that was one of the biggest proponents of the copyright extension, Disney, may find itself being burned because of those extensions that gave in the rights of reversion?""
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=23063
Monday, September 21, 2009
Disney Faces Rights Issues Over Marvel; New York Times, 9/21/09
Michael Cieply and Brooks Barnes, New York Times; Disney Faces Rights Issues Over Marvel:
"Walt Disney’s proposed $4 billion acquisition of Marvel Entertainment may come with a headache: newly filed claims challenging Marvel’s long-term rights to some of its superhero characters.
Heirs to the comic book artist Jack Kirby, a creator of characters and stories behind Marvel mainstays like “X-Men” and “Fantastic Four,” last week sent 45 notices of copyright termination to Marvel and Disney, as well as Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures, and other companies that have been using the characters.
The notices expressed an intent to regain copyrights to some of Mr. Kirby’s creations as early as 2014, according to a statement disclosed on Sunday by Toberoff & Associates, a law firm in Los Angeles that helped win a court ruling last year returning a share of the copyright in Superman to heirs of one of the character’s creators, Jerome Siegel."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/business/21marvel.html?scp=1&sq=marvel&st=cse
"Walt Disney’s proposed $4 billion acquisition of Marvel Entertainment may come with a headache: newly filed claims challenging Marvel’s long-term rights to some of its superhero characters.
Heirs to the comic book artist Jack Kirby, a creator of characters and stories behind Marvel mainstays like “X-Men” and “Fantastic Four,” last week sent 45 notices of copyright termination to Marvel and Disney, as well as Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures, and other companies that have been using the characters.
The notices expressed an intent to regain copyrights to some of Mr. Kirby’s creations as early as 2014, according to a statement disclosed on Sunday by Toberoff & Associates, a law firm in Los Angeles that helped win a court ruling last year returning a share of the copyright in Superman to heirs of one of the character’s creators, Jerome Siegel."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/business/21marvel.html?scp=1&sq=marvel&st=cse
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