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Post by benday-dot on Jun 27, 2014 21:13:14 GMT -5
I'm interested in Stan Lee's position in all this.
Whereas, Kirby was not under contract with Marvel, despite repeatedly trying for such an arrangement and always being rebuffed, Lee was always contractually Marvel staff. Lee, nevertheless, is usually given co-creator status, on the many of characters Kirby is going after in his lawsuit.
Lee has testified on behalf of Marvel, and, co-creator or not, is in no position to claim any ownership rights from the former company to which he so intrinsically associated. But Kirby (here represented by his estate), a freelancer, is actually in a better position now than his old partner to stake a claim on the MU.
If by some "marvel" the courts side with Kirby, Lee doesn't cease conceptually to become co-creator with Kirby, but some poetic justice or karma will have arrived to right an ancient imbalance. Kirby will claim those rights to be denied Stan Lee. After all these years fortunes could be reversed.
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Post by Jasoomian on Jun 27, 2014 21:23:42 GMT -5
If the Kirby estate is able to actually assert those rights; I am sure Lee and his attorney and accountant will review his options at that time.
Lee has been shilling for Disney this whole time, but he has enough chutzpah to change his tune if he thinks it will pay off.
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Post by Jasoomian on Jun 28, 2014 19:00:46 GMT -5
Testing the attachment feature... Here is Evanier(et al.)'s amicus brief to SCOTUS in PDF.
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Post by Rob Allen on Jun 30, 2014 13:31:06 GMT -5
Whereas, Kirby was not under contract with Marvel, despite repeatedly trying for such an arrangement and always being rebuffed, I'm curious about where you got this impression. I recall that Jack preferred to stay a freelancer, and that Stan offered him a staff job as Art Director with the same salary as Stan's on a couple of occasions. |
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Post by Jasoomian on Jul 1, 2014 4:08:45 GMT -5
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 1, 2014 10:10:49 GMT -5
Superman pretty clearly wasn't work-for-hire. The biggie there was the time for termination. And the issue of when the copyright was actually transferred given the various deals that Siegel and Shuster made over the years.
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Post by benday-dot on Jul 1, 2014 14:30:19 GMT -5
Whereas, Kirby was not under contract with Marvel, despite repeatedly trying for such an arrangement and always being rebuffed, I'm curious about where you got this impression. I recall that Jack preferred to stay a freelancer, and that Stan offered him a staff job as Art Director with the same salary as Stan's on a couple of occasions. The way I understand it is that Jack, having lived through the 1957-58 comics implosion and despite the success he was enjoying at Marvel, he was plagued by past experiences of insecurity in the business. He attempted to get a salaried position with benefits and increased creative credit and control. This was promised him several times, but never materialized, probably because the prospect of it scared Goodman. Either Mark Evanier or John Morrow writes of these broken promises in the Jack Kirby Collector. If I can track down the specific article(s) I'll report back. |
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Post by Jasoomian on Jul 1, 2014 15:26:55 GMT -5
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jul 1, 2014 17:39:59 GMT -5
My son Nathan had those when he was little. |
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Post by Jasoomian on Jul 21, 2014 0:05:47 GMT -5
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
Posts: 10,202 
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Post by Confessor on Jul 21, 2014 5:07:07 GMT -5
As for Kirby and Marvel, so essentially, even though it was understood by all parties back then that Kirby did not own the rights to these characters, there was no contract, so the Kirby family is pursuing anyway since they feel that Kirby's work is a large part of what made Marvel what it is? It would sure be nice if I could have profited from it," but Kirby knew what he was agreeing to, even if he didn't know how lucrative his work would prove to be. It's a potentially unpopular stance, shaxper, but I do agree with this. A lot. I'm simply never going to have any sympathy for the handful of multinational corporations that have systematically tied up the cultural history of the 20th Century by buying a pet Congress. Essentially what I get every time is the same thing that I hear from "Tort Reform" advocates. Let's blame the victim and make sure that the big guy is saved from the overweening power of those they oppress. Paradoxically perhaps, I also agree with this. A lot. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2014 13:57:48 GMT -5
The way I see it, the only kind of work in the industry that existed at the time was work for hire, so these guys getting a settlement is fine with me, the same way a garment worker getting a settlement for working in a sweatshop for twenty years back when we had sweatshops. You knew it was a sweatshop, why did you apply? Because the alternative was starving and nobody else will hire a child/widow.
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Post by Jasoomian on Jul 21, 2014 16:19:02 GMT -5
the only kind of work in the industry that existed at the time was work for hire
Evidence?
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Post by Jasoomian on Aug 19, 2014 14:12:06 GMT -5
So, the Kirbys filed their reply to Marvel's brief on July 30th. Kirby family attorney Marc Toberoff has been joined by the founder of the influential SCOTUSblog, Tom Goldstein. The Kirby team is pushing hard on the point that this case needs to be resolved not only for their benefit but to clarify similar disputes involving songwriting, R&D patents, etc: "Even if the legal rule at issue affected only the multibillion dollar franchises based on Kirby’s creations … that would justify review.. . But the implications are much broader." SCOTUSblog itself summed up the Kirby cert petition thusly on July 21: " Issue: (1) Whether a court can constitutionally take copyrights to works originally owned and authored by an independent contractor and hand them to a private party by judicially re-designating them “works for hire;” (2) whether “employer” under the Copyright Act of 1909 can be judicially extended beyond conventional employment to independent contractors, when this contradicts its common law meaning, binding Supreme Court precedent and longstanding canons of statutory construction; and (3) whether “work for hire” can be determined based on post-creation contingencies, like discretionary payment, when authorship and ownership of a copyrightable work, including “work for hire,” vests at inception." The case has been redistributed for conference September 29, when the nine Justices will again consider granting cert. Hollywood Reporter legal blog writeup -- www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/scotusblog-founder-joins-marvel-superhero-722054SCOTUSblog summary page for the case with links to briefs: www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/kirby-v-marvel-characters-incorporated/Direct link to latest Kirby family filing -- sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Kirby-cert-reply-final.pdf |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Aug 19, 2014 14:36:13 GMT -5
Essentially, then, the Kirby estate makes the point that a part of Jack's work was made "work for hire" retroactively and that this is illegal? (I'm afraid that most of the legal terms used in the brief, which probably have a very precise definition, are quite beyond me).
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