Who owns Superman?

Article about the ruling giving the Siegel estate rights to the content of Action Comics #1. [Link]

As you-all know by now, Judge Stephen G. Larson of the United States District Court, Central District of California, has ruled in favor of Jerry Siegel’s widow and daughter, Joanne Siegel and Laura Siegel Larson, in their suit to reclaim Jerry Siegel’s rights to the Superman material contained in Action Comics #1. Pursuant to the Copyright Act of 1976, the Siegel heirs had sued Warner Bros. Entertainment, Time Warner, and DC Comics.

The Copyright Act of 1976 gave authors and their heirs “a chance to retain the extended renewal term in their work and then re bargain for it when its value in the marketplace was known.” (Opinion, p. 62.) In passing the Act, Congress’ intent (quoted by Judge Larson) was to address the “unequal bargaining position of authors, resulting in part from the impossibility of determining a work’s prior value until it has been exploited.” Id (citation omitted).

Accordingly, on April 3, 1997, the Siegel heirs delivered notices of termination to DC which covered various agreements entered into between Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, and DC and its predecessors (hereinafter just called “DC” for convenience). These agreements included the original 1938 assignment of rights, a 1948 stipulation which concerned subsequent litigation, and the 1975 agreement in which DC agreed to pay pensions to the two creators. Id. at 20. The central question of this litigation was whether those notices of termination were valid and enforceable.