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11th Circuit Rules for Stephen King In Suit Over Dark Tower Series
Vincent Cox of Ballard Spahr in Los Angeles and Scott Ponce of Holland & Knight in Miami prevailed recently in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, defending several powerful entities in a copyright infringement action. Cox and Ponce defended six clients, including horror novelist Stephen King, New York-based publisher Simon & Schuster and Marvel Entertainment LLC.
The lawyers said one of the main hurdles in the case was taking the time to compare characters portrayed in works of fiction. "Sometimes copyright cases involve works such as photographs or songs that can be quickly experienced and compared. That was not this case," Cox stated in an email. "Much time had elapsed between the underlying creative events and the filing of the suit. There was also an exceptional volume of literary and visual material alleged to infringe, and to be infringed." DuBay v. King, 19-11224.
The dispute centered on a fictional character that King created in the 1970s named Roland Deschain and the plaintiff's character, Restin Dane, created by a three-person team around the same time. Plaintiff Benjamin DuBay owns the copyright for a comic book series called The Rook, which featured Dane, and sold more than five million copies in a six-year period. DuBay sued King for copyright infringement in The Dark Tower novel series involving the use of protagonist Deschain.
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