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Jack Kirby Heirs Reclaim Marvel/Disney Rights
lbalbalba writes "Heirs to comic book legend Jack Kirby sent 45 notices of copyright termination to Marvel Entertainment, prospective Marvel buyer Disney, Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, and others studios that that hold licensed media rights to Marvel characters. Some rights could revert to the heirs as soon as 2014, for characters that are among the hottest in Hollywood: The Incredible Hulk, The Mighty Thor, Iron Man, Spider-Man, The Avengers, and others. Among other things the heirs' demand could cause problems for Disney's as yet unconsummated purchase of Marvel."
Lee and Marvel shafted Jack big time during the 60s. Jack did 90% of the work while Stan took 90% of the credit. It's about time he gets the recognition and money he deserves. Too bad he didn't live to see it. I had the pleasure of meeting him once, he was a lovely, soft spoken man.
Neither the summary nor the article (I know...) mention what it's going to cost the heirs to get the rights back. TFA states that they can regain control a certain period after the grant of rights had been made, but is this just a normal end of the contract or do they have to buy it back? In the article Disney is quoted as saying they knew this was coming, so I'm guessing this is just the normal end whatever contract the film companies had to license the characters. Are there any IP lawyers who could shed some light on this?
If anything will get the length of copyright reduced back to reasonable levels, it'll be creators reclaiming their IP from big business. Then it'll enter into public domain and big business will probably just settle it via trademark legislation as they divide up public domain.
I really hope this forces Marvel to rethink their strategy. I love comics. I don't like super hero books. Super hero books that run for hundreds of issues with no coherent message or vision suck. I don't care if the current run is good, or if it used to be good years or even a few issues ago. Marvel needs to get back to it's roots selling comics that everyone wants to read, not just 30 something fanboys who obsess over whether or not Kevin Smith did justice to the Green Arrow.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Oh, my. I remember lawsuits involving Jack Kirby and Marvel of the 1980's, when he was still alive.
For those of you who've not made friends with authors and artists, it's very common for companies to really screw the authors who create their most valuable intellectual properties. For any of us who've worked on a major software or hardware project and had it dropped by a VP whose goals it doesn't fit, or have a mediocre middle manager take credit for it, you can sympathize with what happens to these artists.
This doesn't mean that Jack's heirs have a real case, but be aware that Marvel and Jack had some serious disagreements about intellectual property and artwork ownership during his lifetime, and a lot of artists believed that Jack was screwed, really hard, by Marvel's last generations of leadership during his life.
You jest, but the RCA Corporation did *exactly* that in the 1930s with FM Radio. They were afraid it would kill their dominance in the AM market so they kept the FM intellectual property under wraps for as long as possible. And when the actual inventor tried to develop FM independently, they sued him again-and-again until he was a broken man. Not until he died did RCA bring FM to the marketplace.
Never underestimate corporate deviousness. It's as bad as government, minus the ability to send you to the jail, or suck money from your wallet.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Class envy and flamebait? No. I wrote this, because it's my belief having a permanent aristocracy is poison to a country and not in anyone's best interest, and large scale inheritances perpetuate a permanent upper class. I was writing in a general sense, referencing this specific issue - I guess folks interpreted this as flamebait. Oh well.
On a macro-level, capitalism allocates the resources to those who deserve them (i.e. if you're good at business, you make more money, which you then can put back into your business). But there needs to be a way society can collect payment for the infrastructure which allowed for the business success in the first place. The most efficient way to collect the needed funds is to keep those that know how to allocate capital with low taxes, so they can go on and efficiently allocate capital (i.e. low taxes for businesses), but society still needs to pay for the items which made this success possible. The most efficient and sensible way to do that, in my view, is to heavily tax inheritance.
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