automatically by statute from the moment of fixation. Although licensing instruments exist that are designed to provide clear and unequivocal manifestations of intent to abandon copyright, those instruments, too, may not be fully effective in the United States. This background illuminates the multiple difficulties entailed in escaping from the strongly proprietary paradigm of existing copyright law. Those same difficulties, in turn, may color the courts’ interpretations of the other method Congress selected in the Copyright Act of 1976 for strengthening authors’ proprietary control over uses of their works: the statute’s provisions governing terminations of copyright transfers and licenses.
B. Termination of Transfers
1. Text and Purposes
In the early 1930s, writer Jerome Siegel and artist Joseph Shuster created a comic-book character that came to acquire worldwide renown and spawned a host of commercial spin-offs. Originally conceived as a villain called “The Superman,” Siegel and Shuster’s character quickly evolved into an archetypal hero (with a distinctive costume and a back-story involving extraterrestrial origins), shed the “The” from his name, and took up crime-fighting.[1] In March 1938, Siegel and Shuster executed an agreement “assign[ing] to Detective Comics ‘all [the] good will attached . . . and exclusive right[s]’ to Superman ‘to have and hold forever.’ ”[2] Siegel and Shuster received $130 in exchange.[3] Superman made his debut that spring in Action Comics #1,[4] and a franchise was born. Superman made millions of dollars for Detective Comics and its successors, but despite a series of negotiations (and lawsuits) between the parties, Siegel and Shuster saw very little of this money.[5]
Siegel and Shuster’s situation exemplified a pattern that, the legislative history suggests, occurred all too frequently: artists conveyed away their
- ↑ See Siegel v. Warner Bros. Entm’t Inc., 542 F. Supp. 2d 1098, 1102–05 (C.D. Cal. 2008) (describing origins and development of Superman). The Man of Steel has been a fixture of copyright casebooks ever since. See, e.g., Nat’l Comics Publ’ns, Inc. v. Fawcett Publ’ns, Inc., 191 F.2d 594 (2d Cir. 1951) (upholding validity of Detective Comics’ copyright in Superman comics in case alleging that they had been infringed by “Captain Marvel”); Detective Comics, Inc. v. Bruns Publ’ns, Inc., 111 F.2d 432 (2d Cir. 1940) (sustaining judgment for copyright infringement against the creators of “Wonderman,” a character differing from Superman chiefly in the color of his costume).
- ↑ Siegel, 542 F. Supp. 2d at 1107.
- ↑ Id. The parties also executed a later agreement providing for additional per-page royalties for Siegel and Shuster’s subsequent Superman stories and illustrations. The later agreement, however, reconfirmed that exclusive ownership of the rights to Superman had already been transferred to Detective Comics. See id.
- ↑ Id. at 1110; see also id. at 1146–59 (reproducing the cover and thirteen-page Superman story from Action Comics #1).
- ↑ See id. at 1111–13.
