According to the New York Times, the heirs of Jerome Siegel have been awarded a share of the U.S. copyright to Superman by a federal judge.
A federal judge here on Thursday ruled that the heirs of Jerome Siegel -- who 70 years ago sold the rights to the action hero he created with Joseph Shuster to Detective Comics for $130 -- were entitled to reclaim their share of the U. S. copyright to the character. The ruling left intact Time Warner’s international rights to the character, which it has long owned through its DC Comics unit.
And it reserved for trial questions about how much the company may owe the Siegel heirs for use of the character since 1999, when their ownership is deemed to have been restored. Also to be resolved is whether the heirs are entitled to payments directly from Time Warner’s film unit, Warner Brothers, which took in $200 million at the domestic box office with its “Superman Returns” in 2006, or only from the DC unit’s Superman profits.
If the decision survives a Time Warner legal challenge, it may also open the door to a similar reversion of rights to the estate of Mr. Shuster in 2013. That would give heirs of the two creators control over use of their lucrative character until at least 2033 -- and perhaps longer, if Congress once again extends copyright terms -- according to Marc Toberoff, a lawyer who represents both the Siegels and the Shuster estate.
“It would be very powerful,” said Mr. Toberoff, speaking by telephone on Friday. “After 2013, Time Warner couldn’t exploit any new Superman-derived works without a licence from the Siegels and Shusters.”
Time Warner lawyers declined through a spokesman to discuss the decision. A similar ruling in 2006 allowed the Siegels to recapture their rights in the Superboy character, without determining whether Superboy was, in fact, the basis for Warner Brothers’s “Smallville” television series. The decision was later challenged in a case that has yet to be resolved, said Mr. Toberoff, who represented the family in that action.
The ruling specifically upheld the Seigels’ copyright in the Superman material published in Detective Comics’ Action Comics Vol. 1. The extent to which later iterations of the character are derived from that original was not determined by the judge.
In an unusually detailed narrative, the judge’s 72-page order described how Mr. Siegel and Mr. Shuster, as teenagers at Glenville High School in Cleveland became friends and collaborators on their school newspaper in 1932. They worked together on a short story, “The Reign of the Superman,” in which their famous character first appeared not as hero, but villain.
Compensation to the Siegels would be limited to any work created after their 1999 termination date. Income from its 1978 “Superman” film, or the three sequels that followed in the 1980s, are not at issue. But a “Superman Returns” sequel being planned with the filmmaker Bryan Singer (“Usual Suspects,” “X-Men’) might require payments to the Siegels, should they prevail in a demand that the studio’s income, not just that of the comics unit, be subject to a court-ordered accounting.
Read the entire ruling.
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