The estate of Superman creator Joseph Schuster is suing Warner Bros. Discovery and its DC Comics, claiming it lacks the rights to release the upcoming summer tentpole in a handful of key territories.
Plaintiff Mark Warren Peary, executor to the estate, filed the suit today in Federal Court in the Southern District of New York seeking “damages and injunctive relief for Defendants’ ongoing infringement in Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia, as well as declaratory relief establishing the Shuster Estate’s ownership rights across relevant jurisdictions.
The matter is ripe for adjudication, it said, “as Defendants are actively planning a major new Superman motion picture and other derivative works for imminent worldwide release.”
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The latest Superman starring David Corenswet in the title role, is fact, set for release on July 11. The cast includes Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor and María Gabriela de Faría as The Engineer.
Warner and Peary and his longtime legal team have been in court before, most recently regarding termination rights under the U.S. Copyright Act. But The automatic foreign copyright reversion issue in this case did not occur until years later, said Marc Toberoff, attorney for the estate, and was never actually litigated.
Now it will be.
“We fundamentally disagree with the merits of the lawsuit, and will vigorously defend our rights,” said a WBD spokesman.
At issue are foreign copyrights to the original Superman character and story, coauthored by Jerome Siegel and Shuster. Though Siegel and Shuster assigned worldwide Superman rights to DC’s predecessor in 1938 “for a mere $130 ($65 each), the copyright laws of countries with the British legal tradition—including Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia—contain provisions automatically terminating such assignments 25 years after an author’s death, vesting in the Shuster Estate the co-author’s undivided copyright interest in such countries,” the suit said.
“Shuster died in 1992 and Siegel in 1996. By operation of law, Shuster’s foreign copyrights automatically reverted to his estate in 2017 in most of these territories (and in 2021 in Canada). Yet Defendants continue to exploit Superman across these jurisdictions without the Shuster Estate’s authorization—including in motion pictures, television series, and merchandise—in direct contravention of these countries’ copyright laws, which require the consent of all joint copyright owners to do so.”
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