Heirs of Marvel Artist Jack Kirby Sue for Copyrights

Another tidal wave from the Marvel Universe: The heirs of Jack Kirby, who along with Stan Lee probably exterted more creative control over the direction of Marvel Comics and its characters than just about anybody else, are suing everybody they can to terminate copyrights to the material in an effort to regain control of his characters. Now, the good news here is that this wouldn't begin until 2014, but the bad news (potentially) is that Kirby's family has filed a total of 45 notices of copyright termination to Marvel, Disney, Paramount, Sony, Fox, Universal, and others, according to The New York Times. Although most of those companies refused to coment, Disney released a statement saying, “the notices involved are an attempt to terminate rights 7 to 10 years from now, and involve claims that were fully considered in [the company's recent $4 billion acquisition of Marvel].” The how behind all of this is terribly complicated. Copyright law is convoluted enough, but Kirby had a lengthy battle with Marvel over his rights as a creator for the company. Eventually some compromise was reached, but only after copyright laws changed in the late 70s to allow creators some rights. Even then, it took nearly a decade for Kirby to get paid. As The Times reports, "Under copyright law, the author or his heirs can begin a process to regain copyrights for a period of time after the original grant," meaning that the Kirby estate could be in line for quite a bit of cash plus future control over the eventual destinations of his creations. A similar case was just decided wresting partial rights to Superman away from DC Comics and back to the family of Jerry Siegel. Oh by the way: The Kirbys have hired the same lawyer.

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