The judge in the recent Superman court ruling has ordered all parties to attempt to negotiate a settlement:

Accordingly, the Court hereby ORDERS the parties to devote the next sixty (60) days to engaging in a good faith effort to settle their dispute in the Superman and Superboy litigation before the JAMS Mediator. At the conclusion of this period, on June 1, 2008, the parties are to file a joint report, outlining the efforts that they have taken in furtherance of settlement and the results of those efforts.

Jeff Trexler at Newsarama has boiled down the settlement issues for all us non lawyers:

The order in a nutshell:

–The parties are to spend the next 60 days negotiating a settlement.
–After the 60 days is up, the parties are to file a joint report on what happened.
–If they don’t settle, the trial in the Superman case is scheduled to begin on November 4, 2008.
–The court is setting aside ruling on the remaining issues in the Superboy case, along with setting the Superboy trial dates, until after the Superman trial is over.

The decision to recognize the Siegels’ copyright interest is just the beginning. Now the court has to determine how much that is worth.

The core issues flagged by the judge are the last three from my Miraculous Return post, which I’ve copied below with a little bit of an extra explanation distilled from a yet unpublished post. References are to the text of the most recent Superman opinion.

Accounting for profits: DC must account to the Siegels, as co-owners, for the profits from Superman material derived from Actions Comics #1–with the exception of derivative works prepared before April 16, 1999. What constitutes a derivative work has not been determined–there is a lot of new material in the Superman franchise. The court also does not resolve the question of what, if anything, the Siegels should be paid for pre-termination derivative works that have in some way been altered since April 16, 1999. (66-68)

Trademark: The Siegels cannot share in profits purely attributable to Superman trademark rights. However, the court does not determine whether they are entitled to profits from mixed trademark uses that include elements of the Siegels’ copyrighted material. (66-68)

Superman movies and TV shows: The court does not resolve the issue of Superman profits generated by Warner Brothers Entertainment and Time Warner, Inc. (71) The court ruling calls for “a trial on whether to include the profits generated by DC Comics’ corporate sibling’s [sic] exploitation of the Superman copyright.” (72)