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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).
In January, Marvel Entertainment LLC filed suit in New York federal district court against the heirs of illustrator Jack Kirby after they claimed the right to regain partial ownership of some of the comic company's most popular characters, including the X-Men and the Incredible Hulk. Marvel Worldwide Inc. v. Kirby, 2010-cv-141. And in May, the long-running copyright termination battle between Warner Bros. Entertainment's DC Comics and heirs of Superman's creators ratcheted up when the movie studio's lawyers at O'Melveny & Myers filed a lawsuit, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, accusing the heirs' lawyer, Los Angeles-based Marc Toberoff, of contractual interference and scheming to gain control of Superman for his own enrichment. DC Comics v. Pacific Pictures Corp., 2:10-cv-03633-ODW-RZ.
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