DC Loses Rights to Superman - effects on Disney?

[Mr. Toad]

http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog ... an-rights/

Not on topic for Disney. However, if any Disney characters were created by creators while they were not employees of Disney there could be some major ramifications.

For a little bit of background - Joe Shuster and Jerome Seigel created Superman on their own and then sold him to DC. If they had created Superman while employees of DC they would not have the same rights.

Anybody know if Ub Iwerks was a contractor or an employee for Disney when he contributed to creating Mickey Mouse for instance.

[singerguy04]

I'm pretty sure that Ub was a employee of Walts. I know that the Disney bros. studio was formed first and then Walt asked Ub to join, so I would guess that would technically make him an employee. Unless there was no contract stating so....

An equally scary thought is that Mickey isn't too far from becoming public domain. I remember that coming up as a topic i think over a year ago, Does anyone else remember this?

[Mr. Toad]

singerguy-copyrights are extendable by Congress. However, I believe they are currently maxed out at either 96 or 99 years. That would make is 2024 or 2027.

[2099net]

An equally scary thought is that Mickey isn't too far from becoming public domain. I remember that coming up as a topic i think over a year ago, Does anyone else remember this?

I'm not sure why that's "scary". You know copyright lasts longer than a patant already? Why should an inventor loose his intellectual property, but media concept not? There comes a time when everything goes public domian (not that Mickey ever will, not while there's hundreds of lobbyists in the US and other Western countries).

As for DC and Superman, haven't S&S (and their estates) only been granted half the copyright? And as I understand it Time Warner still has the right to veto use of the character and concepts elsewhere.

I expect it will run like some BBC/Doctor Who creations do (a lot of scriptwriters own half the copyright on various monsters and characters), but things there seem to get on fine. In fact, some, like the Daleks have full copyright with their creators and things seem to get on fine.

What it means in reality is more money for the creators, and less money for Time Warner. Really, is that bad?

Oh here's a good summary of the superman ruling: http://io9.com/373875/what-copyright-ru ... r-superman

[singerguy04]

Well to be honest, I don't really know much about copyright laws or anything so I'm not going to pretend like I do. lol

I just think it's kind of scary thinking about what some people could do with a character like Mickey once he was just open for anyone's use. Although I do doubt that Disney would actually let that happen.