But even if that window is missed, if the work was in its renewal term in , a second five-year window opens 75 years after the date of copyright. If a work is first created or assigned after , the termination can generally be effective any time during a five-year window beginning 35 years after execution of the grant.
The only exception to the termination right is works for hire. This is a narrow category that includes works made by employees in the course of performing their duties, and contributions to collective works as long as there is a written work for hire agreement.
The Seigel case illustrates the complexity of these rules. For companies that acquire copyrights only in commercial items with a limited useful life, Siegel may be interesting but largely irrelevant. For those who acquire rights in works of more enduring value, the Siegel saga and the legal provisions on which it turns offer somewhat contradictory lessons.
In the United States, the Organization of Transformative Works has been formed to help support and defend fan fiction from over-reaching intellectual property claims.
Under such a view, the Man of Steel is not merely a commercial franchise — Superman belongs to us all. Even the Justice League should embrace justice in intellectual property law. Portsmouth Climate Festival — Portsmouth, Portsmouth.
Edition: Available editions United Kingdom. Become an author Sign up as a reader Sign in. It has been thirty years since the Copyright Act took effect on Jan. Given the timelines established in the Copyright Act for termination of past transfers, there should be a lot more of these copyright termination proceedings in the months and years to come.
There already have been a few other copyright termination cases of note; one dealing with the termination of the A. Milne copyright transfers of the Winnie the Pooh work, and another dealing with the termination of copyright transfers of the John Steinbeck works. Copyright transfers. While these cases are interesting for historical and cultural reasons, they are also important for legal reasons. Cutting off a previous copyright transfer can be a big deal. Think of the situation in this way.
Suppose you sell your run-down, fixer-upper beach house for a low, but fair, sum of money. Suppose the new buyer spends a lot of weekends and money upgrading the beach house into a very valuable property. Suppose the new buyer and family thoroughly enjoy their new, fixed-up beach house for years. Even when they were given some compensation decades later, it was pennies compared to the networth of Superman , which is in the billions. After all, the Man of Steel is one of the most recognizable and lucrative fictional characters ever conceived.
Read on below to find out more about how DC seriously screwed the masterminds behind Superman. After their failed attempts to sell Superman as a newspaper comic strip, the two pitched the idea in to NAP, which at the time had become Detective Comics eventually shortened to "DC". That's split between two people and, Fun Fact, both of their names were misspelled on the check. After the initial success of Action Comics 1 and subsequent Superman stories, all of which were penned by Siegel and Shuster, the pair decided to exert their ownership of the character by attempting to re-negotiate with DC.
They were told in September of that, in no uncertain terms , they had already signed over ownership of the character to Detective Comics, and that the company was free to replace Siegel and Shuster with a new team if they felt like it. Nothing like the threat of termination to inspire creativity! Feeling the pressure and wanting to keep their jobs, the duo signed a year contract that included the right of first refusal to all the stories they wrote for the next five years, whether they included Superman or not.
Now that Siegel and Shuster were firmly established at DC, they sought to expand the Superman family. Siegel came up with the idea of centering some stories around Superman as a child, and even decided on a name for such tales - Superboy. The company turned him down on several occasions. In , with their year contract nearing its end, Siegel and Shuster decided to make a move to solidify their ownership of the character they had created.
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