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Update on Litigations Over Comic Book Character Copyrights
In comic books, the good guys are usually the ones in tights ' red and blue are the most popular colors ' who put themselves in harm's way to save innocent lives, while the bad guys are the ones sulking in darkened lairs and dreaming up plans to take over the planet. In real-world legal battles over the intellectual property in comic books, the two sides aren't as easy to distinguish, and they're certainly not as colorful. But as the IP rights to comic book icons become the subject of ever more heated ' and lengthy ' disputes, maybe it's time that superhero litigation got its own comic book series.
The litigation of recent months alone would fill a couple of issues. In July 2010, author Neil Gaiman won a fight over the Spawn comic book characters Dark Ages Spawn, Domina and Tiffany when a federal district court judge in Wisconsin ruled that all three derived from other Spawn characters that Gaiman had co-created ' and that had already been the subject of a jury trial and appellate decision more than six years ago. Gaiman v. McFarlane, 02-cv-48 (W.D.Wis. 2010).
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