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Silver Age Charlton?
bchat:
--- Quote from: OtherEric on April 09, 2010, 09:33:53 PM ---A correct registration is still needed for the automatic renewal until fairly recently. And most stuff did have a correct registration even if it doesn't look like it- the THUNDER Agents being a case in point. (I'm still not convinced they were ever correctly registered. But my opinion isn't what pertains; it's the Judge's opinion.)
--- End quote ---
I don't know much about the THUNDER Agents, so I went to the net's best source for incorrect information, and saw this on Wikipedia:
In 1984, David M. Singer's Deluxe Comics began publishing a new series, Wally Wood's T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, featuring some of the best artists of the era, including George Pérez, Dave Cockrum, Keith Giffen, Murphy Anderson, Steve Ditko, Rich Buckler, and Jerry Ordway. Singer claimed the group was in the public domain. A lawsuit by Carbonaro claimed otherwise. The lawsuit was eventually settled in US District Court in favor of Singer. stating Carbonaro failed to prove ownership of any copyrights or trademark in the characters, nor for that matter any protected rights at all by anyone. The characters were allowed to fall into the public domain. Deluxe announced its court victory in Comics Buyer's Guide, and in Wally Wood's T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #3 (November 1985). Deluxe Comics closed its doors in 1986, when several major distributors failed to pay sizeable past-due invoices.
and
In the early 2000s, DC Comics planned to release a new T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents series under license from Carbonaro. Work for about two issues of a new series was completed, but Carbonaro put a stop to it as it made radical alternations to the characters. DC failed to create a series in line with the original series and tone, but began publishing reprints of the original Tower series in their hardcover DC Archive Editions format in a total of six volumes.
Now, if I believe any of the above, it would seem that THUNDER Agents were considered Public Domain when Deluxe was publishing their series, but Carbonaro ... regained the rights? ... pretended to regain the rights? ... when DC tried to do something about 20 years later. If the books didn't carry a proper Copyright Notice in 1965, they should be (as I understand it) Public Domain. So how is Carbonaro claiming ownership now?
JVJ (RIP):
As JohnC is so fond of saying, bchat,
Anybody can CLAIM ownership of anything. Seems that the courts (if one can believe Wikipedia [GRIN]) stated otherwise in 1985. Perhaps there are other factors in the CD TA non-start.
(|:{>
OtherEric:
Well, it's the Carbonaro estate now, he passed away a few years ago. I know there's a description of the situation in the Thunder Agents Companion of a few years ago, which is itself a expanded reprint of a issue of Comic Book Artist.
If I understand it correctly, Carbonaro was able to show a chain of ownership and demonstrate that at least the first Tower issue was copyrighted. (I know issue #1 has a copyright notice on the front cover.) Beyond that, I don't know other than I know wikipedia is either incorrect or Carbonaro was able to convince a LOT of people that he had triumphed in court. I believe his estate owns the rights to the Deluxe issues now.
The first few issues of the Deluxe revival were interesting; certainly quite a bit better than Carbonaro's own efforts in my opinion.
Off on a total tangent: I recall reading somewhere that there were stories from the Tower era that were only printed overseas; has anybody else ever heard of those or seen them?
bchat:
--- Quote from: OtherEric on April 09, 2010, 10:54:48 PM ---Well, it's the Carbonaro estate now, he passed away a few years ago. I know there's a description of the situation in the Thunder Agents Companion of a few years ago, which is itself a expanded reprint of a issue of Comic Book Artist.
If I understand it correctly, Carbonaro was able to show a chain of ownership and demonstrate that at least the first Tower issue was copyrighted. (I know issue #1 has a copyright notice on the front cover.) Beyond that, I don't know other than I know wikipedia is either incorrect or Carbonaro was able to convince a LOT of people that he had triumphed in court. I believe his estate owns the rights to the Deluxe issues now.
--- End quote ---
Thanks for the info. The ownership issue makes for an interesting story on its own.
The Copyright on the first issue's cover is easy to miss, but that's all Carbonaro would need to claim ownership of "the characters". Everything published after that could be considered nothing more than a derivative work, whether those successive issues were Public Domain or not.
John C:
Here's the THUNDER story as far as I've been able to piece it together from (scans of) the original books and (the database of) Copyright Office records...
The interiors of the Tower THUNDER Agents comics have no copyright notices.
The first issues of each series DO have obscured, hard-to-read copyright notices on the covers. That's technically permissible (today), as book-form works may print it on "either side of the front or back cover." However, there are two problems.
First, they're obscure and hard to read, as mentioned. With the exception of UNDERSEA Agent, which has the notice where you'd actually find it, the rest hide the notice within the art, in dark colors. "The notice should be permanently legible to an ordinary user of the work under normal conditions of use and should not be concealed from view upon reasonable examination." (NoMan #1 is another outlier: It has a hand-written notice hidden in the art that I can't read.)
Second, for periodicals, the rule as of 1965 was, that the notice must be "either upon the title page or upon the first page of text of each separate number or under the title heading." That's not the cover, which makes these notices invalid. There's good reason for that, too: A cover notice often claims copyright FOR the cover as a separate work.
This last has changed in the intervening years. Front and back covers, inside and out, are currently valid places for a copyright notice. However, they got it wrong on publication, and you can't get things back from the public domain.
So those were the '60s. The original books, hands down, have no copyrights. If Tower owned the copyright to anything in the entire series, it's the cover to UNDERSEA Agent #1.
Enter John Carbonaro (whose pasta sauce I love...), who "buys the rights." Like everybody in the comic book industry, he had absolutely no idea what that means or what he bought, and assumed it involved exclusive rights to "characters," which really isn't a legally-defined concept. His partner Singer actually did the research and determined that, no, there were no copyrights to own, so he split off.
Now, Carbonaro's interpretation of the copyright law is wrong, but understandable. By 1980, the law had changed to allow copyright notices more globally, as I mention above. As a complete novice, he naturally applied current law to old works and got the wrong answer.
Anyway, when Singer tried to publish his own series, Carbonaro tried to sue, but learned that you don't have the right to sue without a copyright registration. Therefore, he registered those books with (bad) copyright notices. If you look at the Library of Congress records, you'll see that THUNDER Agents #1 is registered, but not until September of 1984. The rest of the registrations (minus NoMan #1, which I guess means that scribble wasn't a copyright notice after all) come in December.
From here, what I know only comes from secondary sources. Allegedly, Carbonaro brought Singer to court, and the judge ruled from the bench (i.e., without bothering to go to trial) that the original books were in the public domain, and Carbonaro had no case. Singer's announcement then caused a flurry of THUNDER appearances through the '80s, because, hey, public domain.
The case also caused Carbonaro to license the Agents to several small companies, hoping that the license agreements would bolster the view that he owned the properties.
Some time after that...I don't understand it at all, but Carbonaro apparently claimed that he petitioned the courts to "give him back" the copyrights, and allegedly succeeded because nobody contested it. But that's complete nonsense, since there's (as I said) no provision for retrieving the copyright of a public domain work. Otherwise, I'm sure somebody would have "re-copyrighted" the works of Shakespeare, by now.
However, since then, it looks like most of the industry has just played ball with Carbonaro, rather than worry about needing to fend off lawsuits from what seems to amount to an overly-posessive nut. Now that he's passed away, though, we'll see what happens. I can't imagine that his estate will be quite as obsessed with the characters.
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