Heirs to the comic book artist Jack Kirby, a creator of characters and stories behind Marvel mainstays like “X-Men” and “Fantastic Four,” last week sent 45 notices of copyright termination to Marvel and Disney, as well as Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Universal Pictures, and other companies that have been using the characters.
The notices expressed an intent to regain copyrights to some of Mr. Kirby’s creations as early as 2014, according to a statement disclosed on Sunday by Toberoff & Associates, a law firm in Los Angeles that helped win a court ruling last year returning a share of the copyright in Superman to heirs of one of the character’s creators, Jerome Siegel.
I believe the one thing the Siegel family had in their favor is that Jerry created Superman when he was a kid and not working for DC. So DC should never have had the rights to the character. Kirby's was after he was an adult and working for Timely/Atlas/Marvel. Most of the characters are work for hire so the company retains the rights. I do believe that he and Simon had a special agreement with the company for Captain America so they may have a chance there but the rest should belong to Marvel. Still I hope they get something out of it.
ReplyDeleteSimon already got back some rights to Cap as I understand it but the Kirby estate was not involved.
ReplyDeleteWill be interesting to see where this goes. Whatever happened to Infantino's similar suit on THE FLASH?
I haven't seen/heard anything about Infantino's suit since it was first announced.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it seems like the whole work-for-hire arrangement may diminish the Kirby Estate's chances, but as I understand it, the idea is to void out the copyright because it's been so many years since those arrangements were made and that the original creator should get the rights.
In any event, Kirby deserved far more when he was alive and it would be only right that his family sees some of the vast fortune his creations have realized.