Cameo Clips

The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California ruled that the widow and daughter of Superman co-creator Jerome Siegel are entitled ' under the complex termination provisions of Sec. 304 of the Copyright Act ' to recapture Siegel's half of the copyright in the comic-book character. Siegel v. Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., CV-04-8400-SGL (RZX). But in the lengthy ruling, the district court also decided that 'the termination notice affects only the domestic portion of Siegel's and [co-creator Joseph] Shuster's 1938 worldwide grant ('all rights') to Detective Comics of the copyright in the Superman material contained in Action Comics, Vol. 1. The termination notice is not effective as to the remainder of the grant, that is, defendants exploitation of the work abroad under the aegis of foreign copyright laws.' The court also found that the 'contentions by plaintiffs ' the recapture or accounting from the mixed use of trademark and copyright and what to do with any alteration in pretermination derivative works ' are not the subject of the present motion. ' Even though it is clear that these issues will impact the accounting of profits in some manner, they cannot be fully adjudicated based on the narrow record currently before the [c]ourt and absent a full briefing of the particular mixed uses or altered pre-termination derivative works that are specifically at issue.' The court sent to trial the issue in accounting apportionment of 'whether to include the profits generated by DC
Comics' corporate sibling's [i.e., Warner Bros./Time Warner] exploitation of the Superman copyright,' including from TV, movies and video.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted summary judgment against the author of a novel who sued for copyright infringement the film studio that produced, and the short story and screenplay authors that wrote, the movie 'Brokeback Mountain.' Scott-Blanton v. Universal City Studios Productions, 07-0098 (RMU). In 1997, The New Yorker magazine published the short story 'Brokeback Mountain' by Annie Proulx. In 1998, Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry turned the story into a screenplay. The final print of the motion picture was completed in March 2005 and released to theaters in December 2005. Pro se plaintiff Janice Scott-Blanton self-published 'My Husband Is On the Down Low and I Know About It' in March 2005.

The district court noted: 'Despite 'Down Low's' relatively late arrival on the publication scene, the plaintiff alleges that after she published the novel, the defendants incorporated protectible elements of 'Down Low' into the 'Brokeback Mountain' screenplay and motion picture and then revised and backdated the short story.' But the court emphasized that Scott-Blanton failed to present 'even a scintilla of evidence' of her allegation of 'apparent contradictions between copies of the short story in the record and other statements made by individual defendants in a series of interviews.'