The legal battle over who owns the rights to Superman just got even more complex. Last year a judge ruled that US copyright law meant that after 1999, certain rights to the Superman character reverted to co-creator Jerry Siegel, including the superhero’s name, his costume, his Clark kent alter-ego, Lois Lane (inlcluding the Superman/Clark/Lois love triangle) and various other things.
However as many parts of the Superman mythos only appeared after Siegel’s Superman tenure, and are therefore still owned by DC Comics, working out who owns what has proved incredibly difficult. A new court ruling has now decided that in addition to their previous rights, the Siegel estate also owns Superman’s Kryptonian origins, his parents Jor-El and Lora, Superman as the infant Kal-El, the launching of the infant Superman into space by his parents as Krypton explodes and his landing on Earth in a fiery crash.
However DC still owns things like Superman’s ability to fly, the term kryptonite, various other characters including Jimmy Olsen and numerous other things.
All this also operates under a deadline that says in 2013 Siegel and co-creator Joel Schuster’s estate will own complete rights to Superman’s first appearance in Action Comics No. 1, which would allow them to go off by themselves and set up TV shows, movies and various other projects featuring the character (although as mentioned, he wouldn’t be able to fly, be hurt by kryptonite or various other things that DC would still own). All this means that if Warner wants to make another Superman movie and hold onto their screen rights to the character, they need to put a new film featuring the character in production by 2011 at the latest.
To be honest, despite all the legal wrangling, it’s difficult to imagine Superman leaving the DC stable, as both the creator and the comic company own vital parts of the character. What this is really all about is who should get what money from Superman, and at the moment things seem to be moving in the direction of the creators.