Nu har Jerry Siegel boet vundet flere rettigheder til Superman fra DC, men hvad med Joe Shuster boet?
fra http://comicscommentary.blogspot.com/2009/08/siegels-awarded-more-superman-rights.html
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Siegels awarded more Superman rights
The
judge’s reasoning is as follows:There is evidence (provided by Denis Kitchen) that the Superman story in Action Comics #4 (about Superman’s exploits in a football game) was sufficiently developed by Jerry Siegel and Russell Keaton some years before Action Comics #1. As such, the story in Action Comics #4 can not be “work for hire”. While there is proof (based on surviving Siegel notes and documentation) that Siegel had the ideas for some of the stories of other early Action Comics issues some time before 1938, the judge says that a mere idea is not subject to copyright.
Pages 3 to 6 of Superman #1 were also developed before Siegel’s and Shuster’s relation with DC, so they would now belong to Siegel’s heirs. There is evidence that pages 1 and 2 are work for hire, since they were done at Detective Comics’s request. (The rest of Superman #1 consists of reprints of early Action Comics stories.)
But what is probably most important is the ownership of the first two weeks of Superman newspaper strips.
(This is the most complicated part of the judge’s opinion, examing in detail the deal between Siegel & Shuster, Detective Comics, and the McClure Syndicate; and also citing previous cases such as the DC-Fawcett lawsuit for Captain Marvel/Superman, and a legal dispute between Burne Hogarth and Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.)
The judge writes (page 85):
So while gaining the copyright to a mere handful of Superman pages and strips wouldn’t seem that important at first glance, gaining the copyright to “Krypton” and “Kal-El” seems to be a very important legal victory for the Siegels.
Notes: First appearance of Jor-L and Lora, Krypton, and explanation of Superman’s powers.