SUPERMAN - COURT SPLITS SUPERMAN IN HALF

COURT SPLITS SUPERMAN IN HALF

In the latest round of court battles between Time Warner's Warner Bros. and DC Comics divisions on the one hand and the estate of Jerry Siegel, Superman's co-creator, on the other, a California court has ruled that the estate owns the rights to all of the Superman trappings that appeared in the first two weeks of the daily Superman comic strips and portions of the early Action Comics and Superman comic books. Later elements of the Superman story, the court ruled, were created by other employees of the comic book companies, including his ability to fly and to see through walls, and the Lex Luthor, Perry White, and Jimmy Olsen characters. In a joint statement, Warner Bros. and DC comics said that they "are pleased that the court has affirmed that the vast majority of key elements associated with the Superman character that were developed after Action Comics No. 1 are not part of the copyrights that the plaintiffs have recaptured and therefore remain solely owned by DC Comics." However, the split copyright is likely to halt any future Superman film or TV project for the time being. As Hervé St. Louis observed on his ComicBookBin.com website "Essentially, to afford Superman's creators extended rights over a character they created in 1939, the character, has been rendered unusable except by legal dictum and an army of lawyers pocketing tons of money for each negotiation." However, under copyright law, the entire rights to Superman reverts to the Siegels in 2013. The other Superman co-creator, Joel Schuster, left no heirs.

14/08/2009