Superboy Ownership
- Posted by Johanna on April 20, 2006 at 5:06 pm
- Category: Comic News
I’m very late on covering this story, but I don’t want to let it go by without mention.
Jerome Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman. Due to a clause put into the recent extension of copyright law, Siegel’s heirs, his widow and daughter, are now the copyright owners of Superboy, effective November 17, 2004. Time Warner of course plans to appeal, but to this non-trained observer, the law seems clear.
And fair. When Congress retroactively extended 50- or 70-year deals with publishers, it was right that they put in an escape clause of sorts. Publishers Weekly has a good summary of the situation.
The big area of speculation revolves around Smallville. A judge has ruled that the show is about the Superboy character, regardless of TW’s “young Clark Kent, not Superboy” attempted dodge. (Newsarama covers this aspect.) If that’s the case, then any episode aired since that November date a year-and-a-half ago infringed on the Siegel copyright. TW put itself in something of a bind, since it had previously argued cases based on a ruling that said that Siegel created Superboy; now, it’s trying to argue the opposite.
The Legion blog has a roundup of lots of links, with special coverage of how the upcoming Legion cartoon might be affected.
April 21, 2006 at 1:17 am
A small but important quibble…. the judge did not rule that “Smallville” is about Superboy. He ruled that the show MAY be infringing on the copyright, but that would have to go to a separate trial.
From the Newsarama article: “The ruling came at the Siegel’s request when they filed for a partial summary judgment, rather than a ruling on copyright infringement, which Lew said in his ruling would call for a “detailed factual comparison.” Lew did agree that there had been enough facts presented to the court to convince it that the lead character in Smallville is, in fact, Superboy.”
The judge ruled that he was convinced, but he’s not the court that needs to be convinced for the infringement case. He was only deciding who the rights belong to.
April 21, 2006 at 8:18 pm
Am I the only one that finds it really bizarre that you can have a character with the same name, look, powers and the like. Yet is considered different because one is older and the other is younger?
I’m rooting for the Siegals don’t get me wrong, I just find it a strange twist in the law.