Comments on: Holy Shit: Siegel Estate Awarded Claim to Superman

By: Jon Silpayamanant

Jon Silpayamanant — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 06:02:37 +0000

Nice, very nice.

By: Rights of Steel… « In One Ear…

Rights of Steel… « In One Ear… — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 11:48:06 +0000

[...] March 29, 2008 in Comic Book Creators, Comic Book News & Opinion I am not sure what I make of this.Â On the one hand, DC owes a great debt to Siegel and Shuster.Â And it’s a crime that the creators of Superman never got more than a cup of coffee, really, for creating the most iconic super-hero ever.Â So I cannot disagree with the joy expressed by Chris Butcher on such a landmark decision.Â As a creative person, this is definitely a “holy sh**” court decision.Â It’s impressive, considering DC probably had enough firepower to make a “strong” case that they should not lose any control over Superman. [...]

By: Chris

Chris — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 08:10:19 +0000

Fixed, thanks. I always insert the superfluous C.

Thanks for the opinion and the heads-up on your blog.

Best,

- Chris

By: Michael Grabois

Michael Grabois — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 06:46:11 +0000

It’s “Shuster”, by the way.

In the Superboy case, a 2006 court ruled that the Siegels regained copyright over Superboy, who in the 1940s had been ruled a separate character from Superman. DC appealed that one, and in 2007 the court ruled in their favor, overturning the 2006 ruling but stopping short of declaring who owns who. As it turns out, both the Superman and Superboy cases are in the same court and are being tried back-to-back.

From my admittedly limited understanding of the laws applied here, I was pretty certain that the Siegels would regain Superman’s copyright, but from reading the documents from last year, it seems likely (to me) that this court will rule that Superboy is derivative and thus Siegel and Shuster have no copyrights to reclaim.

Through the help of Jeff Trexler, I have been following the Superboy case more closely over at my place, the Legion Omnicom.