General Category > Comic Related Discussion
Jack Kirby's copyrights and Steve Ditko's departure from Marvel Comics
bchat:
Read Jim Shooter's Blog (where "comicscommentary" got their quotes) to get his take on things regarding Jack Kirby.
John C:
--- Quote from: Yoc on April 06, 2011, 08:38:22 PM ---What makes me wonder though, if such a document exists wouldn't it quickly end the entire proceedings? This is where the law gets complicated and I turn to JohnC to explain it.
;)
--- End quote ---
Hey...why I gotta be the shark?
Ahem.
Anyway, to the extent I understand it (and I went through that same line of reasoning), it's probably not a huge impact, because the current case is about the termination of copyright transfer. A document that says Kirby gave up his rights in the '60s or the '80s or even last week doesn't have a bearing because the law says that you can't (and retroactively couldn't) make a perpetual copyright grant. And on top of that, whenever the grant was, now's the time it can be terminated (if a grant was made, that is).
Arguably, the document harms Marvel's side of the case a bit, because--if it can be viewed as a contract, in which each side receives something of value--the fact that they had to relinquish rights in exchange for something that wasn't their property would suggest that the artists had rights to give up and were "selling" them, in effect, to Marvel. If the artists didn't own the copyrights and if the form was a contract, then Marvel received no "consideration," voiding the contract. (In that case, the returned art was an informal gift, and the paperwork was just random bureaucracy to piss everybody off. And that sound you hear might be the IRS getting interested, since I doubt any of those artists mentioned such extravagant gifts on their taxes...)
Yoc:
Oh man, I'd hate to see all those other innocent artists getting raked over the coals as collateral damage from the case. :(
John C:
I was half-joking, Yoc. I'm pretty sure the statute of limitations on tax evasion is less than thirty years (it's three or six, generally, depending on how obnoxious you were), and original art since that time has been considered the property of the artist.
Since there's a handy chart, and since the URL contains the handy acronym "SOL":
http://www.justice.gov/tax/readingroom/2008ctm/CTM%20Chapter%207%20SOL.htm
Yoc:
Good, picturing a nice guy like Dick Ayers say getting a nasty letter - well that would be just sad!
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