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Stan Lee Media and Disney Battle For Ownership of Marvel Characters
An anonymous reader writes "Stan Lee Media and The Walt Disney Co. have taken their arguments to the U.S. Court of Appeals over who owns the rights (and profits) to Marvel characters. Though Disney bought Marvel in 2009, Stan Lee Media (no longer associated with Stan Lee, himself) still claims copyright of the characters."
No details, nothing about transfer of copyrights, proof of who is successor of interest, nothing. I RTFA and found the summary is pretty much all there is to know. Anyone got a more informative link?
The actual people who came up with the characters definitely don't own them.
Thanks, pro-corporate copyright laws and contracts!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
Short Version: Stan Lee has had nothing to do with SLM for over a decade - since his former friend and co-founder fled to South America to avoid federal securities fraud prosecution.
SLM is currently a few leeches who have nothing to do with the comics industry are trying to sink their claws into the profits of the creative class.
I understand that creative people need money to work, and the entities that front that money are due a return on their investment.
That's not what's going on here.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
Don't usually own the copyright to the code, when they are doing it for another company.
I get you aren't happy with the balance of power in this but remember the people who created those characters actually did give up their rights to them for payment. If you want to change the laws to give them greater protection consider you may actually be taking away their ability to sell their work and make a living.
My wife and I own the copyright to our wedding photos taken over 25 years ago and have the negatives. Nearly all of the photographers we talked to at the time were still in the old model where they owned the copyright -- especially the older ones. The younger ones were beginning to switch to the new model where the customer owns the copyright.
There are still numerous photographers that stick to the old model because they think it makes them more money. Kind of an interesting belief given the number of people who never have more prints made. Seems to me that you'd make more money just by charging extra for the negatives or digital files.
It's not Stan Lee. It's Stan Lee's ex-company Stan Lee Media whom is currently completely unaffiliated with Stan Lee.
Stan Lee needs to sue Stan Lee Media so that Stan Lee can have the rights to the Stan Lee Media name again.
"Actually, they have. 14 years + one 14 year renewal; and even that was too long."
i think you should have checked the facts. 'The Act extended these terms to life of the author plus 70 years and for works of corporate authorship to 120 years after creation or 95 years after publication, whichever endpoint is earlier.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act
this means that in 2019 some 1923 copyrighted materials will hit the public domain. if they aren't extended before then.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
What is really sad if the inventor of Wolverine or any of the original characters were to draw and post them online to sell, perhaps in retirement for extra cash they'd be sued into bankruptcy.
Totally false. I'm not sure there's a single pro who won't take commissions. Many publish and sell sketchbooks full of drawings of characters owned by companies; nothing happens. If they were to try to sell actually comics stories featuring the companies' characters, that would probably get noticed very quickly, but just drawing characters has never been considered a big deal.
Breakfast served all day!
I was part of the group that stood in line for a week for the original X-Men opening in Hollywood, CA (a hold-over from the popularity of the Star Wars lines).
One day this homeless looking guy (one of many, possibly hundreds, that we saw during the week) came by with a wolverine hat on and told us that he had invented the character. We humored him, but none of us took him seriously. A couple days later Bryan Singer stops by to say high, sees this guy in the background, and pulls him to the front of the line to tell us that the guy invented Wolverine. Oops.
That whole experience was frought with cringe though. Before I had been introduced to Bryan, he knocked my dreamcast off of the TV (ok, we weren't exactly roughing it) and I yelled at him for a solid 2-3 minutes. I also spent some time arguing with an old man about Star Trek, who turned out to be Harlan Ellison. To be fair, he didn't tell me who he was (I would have recognized the name, though I didn't know what he looked like).