Would it be possible to react with a more in-depth look into Legal moments for "The Devil's Advocate" Including the meeting between lawyers & their fields of experience?
How about Dbrand v. Sony in the case of Playstation 5 side panels made by 3rd parties companies and how Patent and Patent pending affect this possible decision.
I'd like to see this definition of "employee" applied to Uber, Lyft, etc. Corporations are willing to argue that people are employees when it comes to copyright and work for hire, but the same exact circumstances count as contractors when it comes to unemployment and paid time off.
Its a little different. These artists were working with the intent to promote MARVEL interests. They didn't make Spider Man and try to sell it to DC. It wasn't an existing character that they were shopping around and just landed at marvel. If you drive for Uber you are working for yourself, Uber is the facilitator between you and the customer. They facilitate the ride, handle the app, process the payment and take their cut. Its a pretty different system entirely. Also, you are not dealing with any copyright with uber.
As much as I dislike the "employes are contractors" BS, I dont think Uber or Lyft are interested in claiming the intelectual products of their drivers.
I don't think its about Disney's legal department being scary, but how the law is set up definitely benefits Disney more than the original creators of characters
We need to revert back to the original model of copyright expiring after 20 years. 70 AFTER the death of the author is ridiculous and was lobbied for by corporations so they could continue to profit for as long as possible. Ironically Disney was one of the biggest companies pushing for that and they literally built up their company on the public domain which they later basically killed
Not necessarily. If the author has the rights, his family will benefit from it for few generations. I think that's what the first intentions were about this. But like many things, good intentions don't always lead to what you expect
@@kaiserruhsam You're very mistaken. Generational wealth disappears typically within 3 generations. Consider this: when Cornelius Vanderbilt died his estate was worth 105 million which is anywhere from 3 billion to 255 billion today. Let's say it was 30 billion in today's money. His son that inherented 95% doubled it's value in 9 years. Gloria Vanderbilt (Cornelius' great great granddaughter) inherited a trust of 4 million worth 74 million in today's money. She died with a million left. Not trying to say 74 million is nothing, but its certainly not billions. The Hiltons are another anomaly of still being wealthy more than 3 generations out.
@@2000ets The problem is 90% of the time is is *not* the author but some faceless company. More over the argument falls apart with computer software - there is no way any of that will be useable when it formally becomes public domain.
Honestly the whole copyright law scares me as an artist, it's kinda the reason I never want to work with other artists or any businesses. I'd rather do everything on my own then deal with copyright issues of working with someone else.
Yeah, and fair enough; it's is its own risk/reward, you take greater financial risk, in exchange for complete ownership. Otherwise, you reduce your risk by working for commission, for the price of losing control of your work.
That's a legitimate fear. Honestly the best idea is if you have any projects you want to keep, work off the clock on them and then make it independently. A lot of artists on UA-cam who have formally, or still are, major studios have done that.
@@X9523-z3v Art and music are more democratized than ever though. "This generation" has it incredibly easy compared to previous generations when it comes to distributing your own stuff online. Mumble rap is a whole genre of music spawned from artists who distribute their own work over soundcloud - love it or hate it, it's been a damn successful venue of independent self-publishing in music.
That makes sense, but different copyright issues catch lone-wolves and little fish. So you probably have to trust a mentor, business, and/or attorney sooner or later, as part of preparing for success. Once you get reliable help, that fear of collaborating or working for a studio might turn into just another tradeoff, like how much and what kind of insurance suits your business.
It’s not that scary. All you need is a boilerplate contract stating you are licensing your work to X for Y amount of time for Z in fees. Read up on how Marvel was receiving royalties from the WWF for 20 years over the name Hulk Hogan. Or how the Bare Naked Ladies practically retired after getting hired to do the theme song for the Big Bang Theory. That one song earned them more money than they ever could have dreamed of otherwise. Just have a lawyer read any contract before signing it. It might cost you anywhere from $50 to $250 upfront for that one service, but you could make much more than that off the first royalty check.
2:01 "Now no one knows what Ditko worked on in his last years…" *This is absolutely false* your honor. Comic fans know EXACTLY what Steve Ditko was working on in his last years. He would literally mail a copy of his latest comic to anyone who'd sent in the money for it. Heck, even I have a copy of a latter day Ditko comic (that I bought off a fan at NY Comic Con who coincidentally had interviewed Ditko). Steve Ditko was _absolutely_ doing his regular usual thing - making comics *on his own terms* _SUPER_ independently - until the end of his life. They're not my thing, personally, but hats off to the guy for sticking to his convictions!
Overruled. Unless you are part of the niche market who knew about, and participated in, this scheme it is safe to say that the colloquial term of “nobody” is just that and not to be interpreted as an absolute statement that literally nobody knew.
@Coding Crusader Hey, whatever makes you happy, man. Glad you felt something for yourself when you said that. And uhhhh double reverse over-over-ruled no backsies lol I sincerely hope you have a great night
What may hurt Marvel in this case, which you didn't touch on, is that they wrote contracts on the back of the checks they paid to their artists for years, which meant that in order to get paid they had to sign that they were giving up the rights to their work. This practice was and is illegal, and the fact that they did it in the first place could be a pretty good sign of proof that marvel didn't consider them employees. Since they wouldn't need to use this tactic if they already knew they owned the rights.
I mean they just chose to stop having them sign their checks that way and made them sign actual contracts that gave the rights to Marvel, so nothing changed.
@@NottherealLucifer well maybe for other creators later, but I’m unaware of any contract with Kirby and Ditko during the start of the Marvel age in the early 60s.
@@kidShibuya They were paid for work, as all creators are, but were illegally forced to sign contracts in order to validate their cheques to get the money they had already earned. If they were being paid to create said characters, why require the extra contract to relinquish the rights to said characters. Using an illegal practice I should restate.
I feel like an more accurate title for this piece would be "Why Disney Could Possibly Have To Share Their Marvel Superhero Profits (But Probably Won't)"
Right? Like this is really bad phrasing. This like many other recent lawsuits or contract negotiations have to do with the fact that Disney just doesn’t want to share profits. Personal opinion: Disney owes the artist whose work that they make money off of.
@@ithlium2284 Disney takes larger shares of opening weekend box office money than other studios, too, on top of owning almost everything. It seems pretty clear they want to pretty much own Hollywood entertainment in its entirety. Crazy how anti-trust laws didn't kick in with the Fox acquisition. Honestly, it would not be completely implausible for them to buy out Paramount at some point, and possibly snatch up Columbia/Tri-Star from Sony. Lion's Gate, it is impressive that they are still their own entity, but that probably won't last forever. We may eventually be down to three conglomerates: Disney (which also includes Fox, Marvel, and Lucasfilm), Time-Warner (now owned by AT&T, and primarily includes Warner Brothers, New Line, and DC), and NBC/Universal (the latter also competes with Disney in the theme park business).
I heard about this case a while ago and immediately looked to see if you covered it since you do a good job of breaking down legal disputes in an easy to understand way. Glad you finally covered it.
More fuel to my growing belief that, being incapable of themselves actually creating intellectual property, a corporate entity should not be able to own intellectual property - and they sure as hell shouldn't have stronger intellectual property protections than the individual authors that the corporate entity must rely on to create intellectual property in the first place. If it can't _have_ ideas, it probably shouldn't _own_ ideas.
this would go down a rabbit hole quickly though.. because then any logo would be owned by the respective creator, not the company that commisioned it for their use. basically its the end of Company Logos and stuff.
Stan Lee was famously promised a royalty percentage on the Marvel comics movies - and didn't see a cent. Somehow, Hollywood movies are never actually "profitable".
Why does it seem oddly satisfying to know that Disney's constant desire to extend copyright could make them lose it's most lucrative characters as well.
@@CurrentNetPriceTanaka It would just mean that they would need to pay the creators of the characters when using them in their films. Seems more than fair to me.
I just think that 90 years is probably too long for works to be excluded from public domain because culturally they are already in the public domain but legally they aren't.
Because of the Internet, just about any work “culturally” enters the public domain, because anyone can create and share fanfiction of that intellectual property. Like Sonic and Mario fanfiction for example
@@faded9581 well even a with stricter standard, the rule still applies. If you go to a concert and sing the artists song back at them, that's basically copyright infringement? Or is it you all making a new work? It just seems to undervalue works if you only value them interms of the work and meaning the original artist brought to it. Spiderman isn't just that original creation, it's the memories you have reading the stories, it's all the dodgy jokes and memes, it's part of culture. How can someone claim a monopoly over all that?
Life of the author plus 70 years could get up to 160 years. Surely authors of the 1860s would have written more if they knew their great-great-great grandkids could get movie royalties for it.
The dumbest thing in all of this is that copyright is so long now that the authors are dead and 60 years have passed since they were created, but people are still arguing who gets to make movies with these characters. They should be on the public domain.
They use Copyright as a sort of verification/canon system to make sure that "low effort" versions don't get through and risk damaging the image of the brand. Of course, that also means shutting down fan projects as well, so it's a double edge sword as those making tributes get handed C&Ds even if they didn't plan to monetise their content
Not only is brand image a worry, but also the public doesnt want to go see 3-4 different spiderman movies from 4 different companies. For the general audience it will get VERY confusing and possibly make the brand go downhill
The fact that simply finding how close a relationship between someone and a company can determine whether or not they are a contractor is bizarre and just sounds wrong.
I think what it will ultimately come down to in that case is whether or not Kirby's work fell within the scope of a broader Marvel project. So, for example, if he was writing portions of a larger Marvel comic or series and the works he produced would not be functionally usable on their own, I would think those works probably fall under the heading of "for hire". If he was writing complete, unique comics and they were simply being published through Marvel, you could make a case that he was an independent contractor. This is just me inventing legal rules, but that's how I would approach it.
I could also see a case if they created their characters independently and pitched them to marvel, rather than it being a collaborative process. For example, if I created a new character, and said "hey Marvel, want to publish this?" That would be different than "Hey, let's brainstorm some mew characters to act as new spiderman villains"
I don't think we'll ever get rid of that distinction or stop needing to be particular about the difference between being a contractor and working as part of a company, but it's an area to be extra careful of, as it's ripe for potential abuse. Your gut revulsion to those with power trying to manipulate that distinction is well-founded and if I ever see a good way to solve the issue forever, it has my full attention.
Yeah because the families started it not Disney. It reminds me of how Stan Lee's daughter was nothing but a lazy leech who wanted Lee's money and he let her mistreat him and get away with it. It is true a small amount would be plenty for the families. I think only the live person should have rights to their content, not their family members.
@@cristlejohnson4900 And a megacorporation has more right to these works? As the video points out, Disney is to blame for copyrights continuing for as long as they do… specifically so they can farm intellectual property that arguably should be in the public domain.
TBH, I hope both sides lose. If copyrights hadn't been extended in the '90s, Spider-Man would have been public domain a long time ago. Extending copyright as long as they have has contributed to a lack of creativity. It's the reason we have so many sequels and reboots rather than original works of art. These laws have also been twisted in such a way that they don't protect the creator, they protect whoever owns the copyright whether they had anything to do with the work or not. See replies for some corrections to this. I see it as more of a conversation so I'm keeping what I said originally.
Yes, the laws and the intervals extended all this time have not been for the benefit of the creative people, but of corporate holding companies and heirs of the estates of creators. The spirit of copyright law was always supposed to be to duly compensate creators for their distinct artwork, and protect them from theft. If the copyright protected the creators until the end of their lifetimes, or for some specified interval (e.g. you have 50 years to make whatever money you can off your story, play, song, drawing, sculpture), whichever one is longer, who could complain?
If the copyrights hadn't been extended in the 90s, the 1978 Copyright Act would still have been in place. That set the copyright term for corporate ownership at 75 years. Spider-Man was created in 1962. So he wouldn't have gone into public domain until 2037 (technically, January 1 2038), not "a long time ago". (The 1998 Act basically only added 20 years to that.) (For creator-owned works, it was the life of the author plus 50 years, and Spider-Man was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, who both died in 2019, so it'd be even longer if you considered that term, and the 1998 Act added 20 years to that as well.) (The best one could argue is if Spider-Man were held to the copyright terms at the time of his original publication, which could be renewed to a maximum of 56 years. Which means he COULD have entered public domain after 2018, but that's still not "a long time ago", and the 1978 Act specifically superseded the 1909 law.) And, of course, he'd still be protected by trademark, which can be renewed indefinitely as long as they're in use.
@@GreenLuthor good to know. That trademark bit just gives me more to be disgruntled with. Not that I plan on making any of these movies, but we don't need MCU Phase 50. Nor do we need more heirs to unearned fortunes in this country. It's mostly me grumpy old man style shouting at clouds, I know. The rest is snobbery.
I have to say that I find the decision in the Ditko case absolutely insane. They didn't try to argue that he WASN'T a freelancer, but that because he had consistent work he should still be treated like he was a normal employee despite lacking any formal agreement? It seems like the court decided that because he was successful as a freelancer he didn't really count as one, which is baffling to me.
Makes perfect sense to me. If you're a successful freelancer, you presumably have the means to shop around various publishers. If both the publisher/studio, and the creator assume that the creator is going to create a comic and that the publisher will publish it, there is an implicit contract. If every time he produced something, he tendered it to several studios, or indicated in some other meaningful way that he didn't expect that he was creating something specifically for marvel then he would have had an argument.
@@Musikur "implicit contract"? So not an actual contract. The argument that he should have tendered to several publishers doesn't make sense, even now if you're an author or comic book writer you will mostly likely have a specific publisher in mind based on what you produce. I don't see how that implies a contract
If intellectual property law was designed to promote the growth of creativity and useful arts, we must all ask the question of whether or not it still does. Once upon a time, pursuing that end required protecting publishers. But in the environment that we have today, where the internet has made it possible to self-publish like never before, is siding with traditional publishers as a matter of policy still best? Isn't it time to give more bargaining chips to the creators/authors/artists?
Yes. I can understand that an artist (or a company) need protection so their newest works do not get copied immediatly, and even to a lesser degree the artist wishes that he can control his work even long after he made enough money out of it. But the public also has an interest that work will be free eventually, and not in 130-160 years or more (author did something in his 20s, lives to 80, and then 70-100 years after death in some jurisdictions).
But this is not the creator it's their nephews. Your actually arguing for worse copyright laws that would kill everything. Now not only is marvel or Disney not allowed to make stuff but no one ever.
@@FriedrichHerschel For what it's worth, I think that the growth of culture is so fast now that copyright/trademark/patent protections must last only 10 years since 1st publication or introduction to the market or first filing before the relevant government office, whichever comes first. Period. Why? If you haven't made millions by then, you need to make something new. IP Law protection is so lengthy that creators and publishers alike rest on their laurels and actually stunt the growth of creativity.
except, even if your argument is true (and I'm not commenting either way), the arrangements which are being discussed here happened looooong before the internet. And it's not fair to hold arrangements from 50 years ago to the circumstances of the modern world.
He has had several appearances since as well: Seen with the yellow sex workers in GotG 2, took part in the battle for earth in Avengers Endgame, and features in What If?
@@smifull what if is technically a television series, so Disney can use any character they have the tv rights for, like how wolverine and the fantastic four showed up in avengers earth mightiest heroes, i believe that's also the reason why spider-man's suit in that what if episode was slightly different from the mcu one
I'd like to see your take on why United States vs. Paramount Pictures shouldn't be applied in a modern context to prevent movie studios like Disney from owning the means of distribution, i.e. a streaming service? [hint, it should apply]
So are companies like Uber and Doordash on the opposite side of Disney here? From my understanding, Marvel is arguing that Jack Kirby was indeed an employee despite there being no formal contract and Kirby’s work being mostly self directed. But Doordash and others would like to see their workers as independent contractors, not employees, despite an Uber driver having a lot less freedom in their work than Kirby did.
No, they're not on the opposite side, Disney is just saying whatever suits them. If it suited them for those artists to NOT be employees - they would've said that, too.
This sounds like the opposite line of reasoning Disney used to extend the copyright to Mickey Mouse for a million years. If the profits of these creative works aren't going to their creators or the families of their creators, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be public domain. But I guess that's more of a moral position than a legal one.
I wonder if an argument could be made for Spider-Man, because from what I remember, the company that hired Lee and Ditko for that comic run definitely did not want them to publish a comic about him. The way I heard it told, they put him in the last issue of a comic run because they figured they couldn't get fired after the last issue. Would that put doubt in the "scope of his or her employment" or "specially ordered for use" wording in the Works Made For Hire code?
It was an anthology book; they weren't hired for a "comic run". And the publisher, Martin Goodman, agreed to let them put Spider-Man in the last issue because it was being cancelled, so he figured it wouldn't matter much one way or the other. (Goodman didn't think an insect-themed hero would sell, but he still approved the story for the final issue.) (When Spider-Man turned out to be popular, Marvel decided to just give him his own book rather than continue the anthology.) (Also, Martin Goodman was Stan Lee's cousin, so Lee got a lot of freedom anyway.) But neither Lee nor Ditko was getting fired over putting Spider-Man in the book, under any circumstances.
@@GreenLuthor Lee (and I say this as a huge fan of him) had a faulty memory and when he couldn't recall the original events would make up a new story. The notion that Goodman put Spidey into an already cancelled title appears to be the case here. If you look at Amazing Spider-Man #1-2, they each had two stories. Half-sized stories were at the time used in anthology titles but not regular titles. This suggests that Spider-Man was meant to be an ongoing feature in Amazing Fantasy and Goodman hadn't cancelled the title when he approved the feature. The most likely sequence of events is this: 1. Amazing Fantasy #15 gets published. 2. Goodman sees the sales figures for an earlier issue of Amazing Adult Fantasy (the previous name for the title) and only then cancels the title, unwilling to wait and see how the Spider-Man feature did (keep in mind that back then you had to wait a long time to see sales figures for a published issue). 3. Goodman sees the sales figures for Amazing Fantasy #15 and grants Spider-Man his own title, with material intended for Amazing Fantasy #16-19 becoming Amazing Spider-Man #1-2.
I don't want the movies to end, at the same time I don't like companies hording properties. I would argue that I'd the artists and writers was employed by marvel to make comics, that would be the same as a programmer employed to make programs, or a designer employed to make logos package designs etc... So then marvel should have the rights. If the artist made the character and approached marvel to publish but, like most authors, they should keep the right to their characters. Also after the creators death, the character or work in question should enter the public domain.
Even if Disney lost all rights, why would the movies end? Spiderman IP is worthless if its not being used. The heirs don't want the rights so they can lock them in a safe and never touch them, they want to use the rights to make money. The most that would happen is that the IP would transfer to the heirs and Disney would then license those rights to continue making movies, and the heirs would receive a share of the earnings. If the new IP owners ask for too much or get too difficult, then Disney just retires that franchise and continues to profit from their own catalogue as well as LucasFilm, Fox and all the rest of the IP they own. There is no scenario in which the rights transfer and that somehow "forces" Disney to stop making movies and no scenario in which a change of rights mean we never see another movie containing these characters. Disney and other studios will just have to bid for the licence, and if they don't win the bid, someone else would and those characters would still appear in films.
that's not really the same thing. As programmers you are hired for a specific project to write code and paid based on the lines of code. That's just not always the case with comic books, many of the creators visualized those characters in their own time in between what they were actually hired to do.
This doesn't make sense to me - the first artist was hired to do a piece, he did it and the courts decided that the commissioned piece's copyright was his. Marvel had a loose agreement with Kirby and he offered his comics to them, which they could always turn down and the courts said he didn't own the rights to his works? I mean... if the first one wasn't "for hire" then Kirby shouldn't have been either - wonder if this is a case of "Money makes the world go around... and the judges agree with you"?
The difference here is the amount of work. The previous instance was a one time deal, whereas Kirby was being offered work on a regular basis for years. The idea is that if someone hires you to do a one time job and then you're done, you're an independent contractor, however if you're working exclusively for them and you're doing regular work (meaning you're always working for them, with the exception of some time off) for a long period of time, then you're no different than an employee. Now don't get me wrong, I think this sucks and is incredibly exploitive, but the difference between the two cases is clear.
What's important is that what incentives the creation of the work. If the artist made it because he wanted to and later decided to sell/publish it then it's his property. If he made it because a company (in this case Marvel) asked him to and payed him for it then it's the company's property. It all depends on the motivation. Just like if you invent a new type of car then it's your intellectual property but if you do it because Chevrolet payed you for it then it is theirs. Even if they payed after you invented it.
@@chrismanuel9768 that's actually why this distinction was created, so they had a framework for determining what an independent contractor is and what a regular employee is.
@@HomoErectusIsAFunnyName If Chevrolet said they needed a new car, and I made one, then It would still be my IP, as they didn't pay me, nor ordered anything specific and they would not be forced to buy the finished result if they didn't want to - wasn't that the deal Kirby had with Marvel? As I understood it, Marvel would say they needed a comic or certain panels and Kirby would draw that, but he would only be paid if they chose to buy it, so it ought to be his IP's as he never was obligated nor paid to work, but only sold the finished product.
Not a fan of that side view camera, feels like I'm in a meeting and just listening to someone talk among themselves, much prefer the front facing camera where it feels like you're informing me. Other than that, once again a very enjoyable video.
As much as I love Marvel’s IP, I absolutely disagree with copyright law as-is because it grants IP in perpetuity to companies, which are treated like basically immortal people. Even if a company folds, their assets are snapped up by another corp or a holding company, and the “immortal ownership” of that IP continues. IMO there needs to be a set limit on ALL copyright - doesn’t matter if its 50 years, 75 years, 150 years, whatever, just not “infinity and beyond” (oh, I forgot, Disney owns that, too, sorry.) This is not a good thing for everything from art to scientific endeavor, to historical documentation. A company can literally buy up a property, sit on it because it’s too similar to something else that they own, and effectively kill it because they don’t want the competition.
I don’t disagree, but I do want to point out that copyright, trademark, and patent are all different. Things Products and technology are typically covered by patents which do have a time limit (20 years I think) for precisely the reason you state. Copyright typically only covers works of art. Of course with anything legal things can get muddy.
As someone who's going into the comics industry as a career, the intellectual property ownership rights (including copyright) is so screwy. I feel bad for the creators of these characters, but their situation is why creator rights are much more important and carefully considered these days in comics. But the general understand is if it's made for hire, the company owns it and that applies both for the artist or writers who are credited as creators, or in the case of fan works. And honestly I'd like to see a breakdown on how all this stuff works for comics and such on a legal ground- and this video is a fun, and informative starting point!
I mean, you write a comic, take it to a bunch of different publishers, and don't sign anything which says you give the rights over.... It's the same as for a novel, albeit I guess the barriers to entry are probably higher for a comic book artist.
@@Musikur not true at all. There are options to retain the rights, and get a miniscule royalty check, or sign away the rights and get a bigger check. Not to mention the fact that the work for hire issues still prevails to this day. with most major publishers making sure the most the creator sees in those cases is credit for the work. The comics industry, due to being seen as "low brow" for so long has a lot more predatory contracts. That has been changing in recent years, especially with growth in the self publishing area, especially with the advent of crowd funding. But it's still far more complicated than "don't sign the wrong contracts" Because thanks to a series of writers in the 90s who considered themselves "superstar artists" Marvel and DC were pretty much permanently turned off on the idea of "creator owned" making the problems Ditko, Kirby, Lieber, and even Lee experienced far worse than they should have been. Just look up how hard it was for Kirby to get back his original artwork. It's a fascinating mess which is why I'm so curious to see what a Lawyers in depth take on it all is.
There are tons of problems with suppositions at the center of the Kirby ruling and these later actions. Until recent decades, the publishers did not have employment contracts and the artists provided their own materials to produce the work, though, at some point, marvel was provided it's own drawing pages. What's more relevant is that in many cases, marvel did not originate the character or series, or assign the artist to do it. many were conceived by writers and artists and pitched to the editor-in-chief and many characters were created without the direction or input of Marvel, including Stan Lee as Editor-in-Chief. Famously, in the Fantastic Four, with the debut of Galactus, Jack Kirby decided the world-devouring giant needed a herald, to announce his coming and created the Silver Surfer. Writer/editor Stan Lee was unaware of the Surfer until Kirby turned in the artwork, for Stan to write the dialogue, to accompany the visuals. That was when Kirby explained who the Surfer was. Kirby and Ditko both originated plots and characters without direction from Stan, as he was busy with other things and they had long track records of generating their own stories. More often than not, Stan was reacting to the material for the first time, when he went to work on the dialogue, sometimes even reinterpreting what Kirby and Ditko had created. This was a major factor in Ditko leaving Marvel (along with hollow promises of sharing in merchandise, made by publisher Martin Goodman). Ditko and Lee became so contentious that Ditko would work on stories on his own, without input from Stan, and turn in the finished art. Dr Strange was especially a product of Ditko's origination, while the collaboration on Spider-Man had greater balance, as Stan added personality elements and even changed the tone of scenes, by providing dialogue that was contrary to Ditko's intent, such as when Ditko depicted a campus protest, which was critical of the protesters, in his plot, but which Stan dialogued in a more sympathetic manner. This was part of the rift between the two, as Stan was a fairly middle-of-the-road person, politically, while Ditko was far more conservative. On the opposite side, Kirby was far more liberal than Stan and had seen combat in WW2, while Stan was stateside. Comic book publishing was one of the most exploitive mediums, with creators treated rather poorly. Unfortunately, modern conglomerates are just as shady as the mobsters, dodgy publishers, fraudsters and quick-buck artists who started many of the publishing companies and got rich off the back of the creative personnel. Stan is the rare exception, as he was a cousin to the publisher and was figured-into the business for the rest of his life. Will Eisner and Joe Simon were smart enough to know the real money was in owning their creations and made deals that gave them ownership of their work. Most of the rest ate crow to feed their families, while the publishers bought respectability.
I am a die-hard and avid reader/lover of comics and their history. Welcome to the complex world of creator rights in comic books. I love seeing everybody learning and trying to give input, but so much of this stuff is heavily rooted in the history of the industry. It's all much more complex than any of us could figure out unfortunately, and it's hard to know the right outcome. It's primarily an issue with the really old school generation, because back then (1) there weren't industry standards, and (2) comics weren't that profitable. The creators pumped out issue after issue of material they often probably didn't care about just because it was a job. Comics were bought for your kid on your way home from work, and your kid would throw them away a few days later. So a lot of these creators sold or signed over rights to their characters because they could never have imagined they'd be worth anything. Over time, creators and readers started becoming more invested and caring more and more, but by then two major shifts had happened: (1) the characters had grown beyond the sole creations of the original works, and were now characters that truly did belong to the companies, as they were ingrained as part of the connected universes and had developed significantly since the original issues. (2) the new creators were aware of the previous change and it just became industry standard that when you work on these books, you're adding to the mythos owned by the company. It's different for works that aren't part of the wider universes, like if Marvel/DC is just publishing your standalone, original work and retaining the rights, that's messed up. For example, DC famously has the rights to Watchmen and it's characters, even though at the time it was an entirely standalone, one-off miniseries that Alan Moore wrote. But with these shared universe characters it's hard to say what should be done with them. And then it gets even more complicated when you start bringing in not just the copyright for the characters themselves, but then the publishing and distribution rights, the copyright for all previously published material, etc. Complicated stuff.
Oh man, it looks like the guy who fought and won back the rights to Friday the 13th and Jason Voorhees has inspired other folks to follow suit! If this happens then it doesn’t mean that MCU goes away, but it means that Disney will have to share a massive amount of their profits with the rights holders. Since Disney is making ridiculous amounts of money off of these characters, they’d be stupid not to pay whatever it is they’re asking for in their contracts.
Good. If Disney's gonna have a monopoly on a majority of the entertainment industry anyway the least they can do is share their income with some of the creators who helped them get there.
That lawsuit finally ended?! That's great news. Friday the 13th laying dormant for so long was a shame, but totally understandable. If there was any business shadier than comic books in the 60s, it was slasher movies in the 80s
>If this happens then it doesn’t mean that MCU goes away, but it means that Disney will have to share a massive amount of their profits with the rights holders. That is exactly what it means. They'll write out the characters from existing in the Marvel universe, 'forget' that they're in the MCU, and do their best smear campaign on the artists while strong arming the industry to blacklist them.
@@leadpaintchips9461 They don't have to try hard to blacklist the artists. Marvel is one of the big two comic publishers and the bigger media company, thanks to Disney. They can just as easily not hire them and never use the characters, like they did with the X-Men and mutants in general.
@@tuffy135ify IIRC, they wrote them out over the dispute and replaced them with a copyright friendly version of the role mutants played until they were able to get the X-Men back.
Now I'm interested in your thoughts on Ken Pender's lawsuits. He used to work for Archie Comics and claimed copyright to all the characters he created while working for them, Archie filed a lawsuit against him, he filed a lawsuit against SEGA and Archie, then filed a lawsuit against Electronic Arts - it's a story. By the end he owns the copyright for all the characters he created and now gets royalties on reprints of issues with his characters. After the lawsuits, Archie killed off or removed his characters from their comics. It's interesting to know that proving characters were works for hire wasn't an issue specific to Archie.
Marvel charged its artists retroactively for the art supplies. Even decades later. How does that affect this, if at all? That sounds like Marvel was selling art supplies to its employees. Not even Texaco sold pencils to drafting department employees in its heyday.
That hasn't been a thing in a very, very long time (and even before, it was never really a *big* thing). In the digital age, it's possible to perfectly mimic a mailed envelope. There are even websites that break down the details in the barcodes (because of course there are) to make it indistinguishable from what it would have been had the letter been actually mailed. Because of this, a person could take something that already existed (probably created by someone without the funds to really defend themselves), create a bogus letter for it, age it (aging paper is remarkably easy), and then claim that the work was theirs.
OMG, I love that you used that Maleficent clip "oh dear, what an awkward situation" - that is exactly what Disney would say in their classic Disney villain voice :)
Viewed from a different angle: Some amount of legal/copyright classes should be required curriculum for artists so they'll know how to properly protect their interests. Because they're constantly getting screwed over in the short run and long run by much larger entities that profit enormously off of their work.
The "screwing over" is the problem, not the lack of knowledge by the artists. You shouldn't have to become a lawyer (or repeatedly consult a lawyer) to get a job. If ordinary people can't understand the law, the law is wrong.
@@1FatLittleMonkey Agreed. But the law isn't going to change to favor smaller interests and/or become easier to understand. Thus, it's the people affected negatively by it that need to adapt and learn to cover their assets.
@@davidg5898 Simply giving artists legal training won't help them if the law gives the employer all the power to dictate terms. As seems to be the case here.
@@1FatLittleMonkey This entire video is about the fact that the legal relationship between the artists, their work, and Marvel was never clearly established. So, yes, a little legal knowledge on the part of the artists *would* have helped here. A document stating whether they were employees or contractors would have made a big difference. If working as a contractor, they would then want other documents stating whether any given art was work for hire, an assignment, a licensed work, or falls into another category -- that would define who is the holder of which copyrights (distribution, reproduction, design, etc.). Those 2 types of things written down on paper would have totally avoided pretty much all of the legal issues discussed in this video. Employers do not have all of the power to dictate all terms. If an artists work is specifically desired, that artist has their own power. Part of that power is to say "Your terms are unreasonable and you're unwilling to budge, I'm going to approach XYZ company about my work instead." Selling/licensing/etc. art is always a negotiation.
So fun fact, the "for hire" law actually makes companies own pornography if their artists choose to be spiteful. I know it's happened but I can't remember if it was Disney or another company that Definitely has that in their vault
I'm not sure how i really feel about this. I think the creators and families are entitled to some IP rights, and that Disney can stand to pay out to creators. Granted, it would be nice to see further creations featuring these characters.
Yeah if these family wins then what happens? Are they just going to sit on the rights of the character for the next century without doing anything with them? I don’t like Disney being monopolistic, I want to see the heirs to these legendary creators being fairly compensated, but I don’t want to see characters like Thor, Spider-Man, and Iron Man in copyright limbo till I’m a shriveled old man, corpse, or Brain in a Jar.
@@InquisitorThomas I saw some other legal breakdowns that if the rights went to the families, they would likely then enter agreements with Disney where the characters can keep being used in movies and comics, and that the families/estates would be able to get profits from those works instead purely Marvel/Disney
@@InquisitorThomas "Are they just going to sit on the rights of the character for the next century without doing anything with them?" I submit that it's literally insane to suggest they would do this. What they will do is license the characters to Marvel so that they will continue to make bank from them.
It would be dumb for people that have done absolutely jack-diddly-squat to contribute to the characters creation to get anything from it. I might agree that Disney should forfeit something if it was the original creators, but it's just their descendants who realistically shouldn't be entitled to something their parents or grandparents sold decades before they were even born.
@@Elaborance I donno if I’d be so hardline about generational inheritance. On one hand, yeah, I don’t think the children or family of a creator should have creative or economic control of a property. On the other hand, the labor of the artist and their hope to insure the fiscal well being of their family via their work, I think, should be respected. It’s why wills exist, and while inheritance can lead to real entitlement and miserly families, I think that your average worker, artist, creator, etc. isn’t giving their children millions, or billions, but a chance at college or trade school, health insurance and the like. But hey, that’s just me.
Speaking of Jack Kirby, comics fans from the 80s know of his battle to reclaim pages of artwork being withheld by Marvel. Jim Shooter, who was then Marvel's editor-in-chief, was vilified in trade publications and comics news outlets because some believed he had the power to collect all of Kirby's artwork at the Marvel archives and hand it over to Jack. Not quite that simple...
I've followed the Toberoff/Siegel &Shuster heirs case for many years, and all I can say is that the whole situation is ugly. Nobody in that lawsuit comes out looking good. I rarely feel good about a situation where the creative minds who developed a character from scratch don't own their own creations. I don't like it when a company hogs the profits when an IP explodes the way Superman did in the 40s, 50s, and 60s while the creators struggle financially. I don't think it's right for the heirs of the creators to stake a claim in revenues when they also had no part in the creation or distribution of the IP. And, sorry Devin, it doesn't sit well with me when the person who may have the most to gain financially from a successful suit is the plaintiffs' lawyer, as Toberoff had a lot of machinations in place should his clients had won the suit. Accelerating entry into public domain might be the best bet here.
1:30 - Chapter 1 - Why marvel is suings its creators ? 2:45 - Chapter 2 - What is a termination provision in copyright law ? 5:30 - Chapter 3 - Which works are eligible for termination ? 13:15 - End roll ads
I mean, maybe it's cuz I'm not a lawyer, but this case seems pretty heavily stacked in Marvel's favor, based on precedent. I don't see how anyone could view these works as anything but for-hire.
Yeah. If Jack Kirby who had a far more loose relationship was ruled to be work for hire, there's no real logical way to argue that the others are anything else.
@@jonasturklbach2705 Why unfortunately? these guys could have been completely independant and just published their creations through Marvel, but that would have meant greater risk to them, so they chose to work for a company which would then have ownership over their creations. That's how the world works, that's both the advantage and disadvantage of working for a company: better stability of pay and conditions, loss of ownership for work. I'm not a fan of modern Disney in the slightest, but I think what they are arguing is completely reasonable in this case.
How could the Supreme Court have viewed that sculpture as anything but a work for hire? That seems even clearer than the Marvel cases, yet they somehow ruled the opposite (wrong) way.
To this day, there is pay that never was given to Ditko for his work on Spiderman. Plus Ditko based his idea on a concept originally conceived as the Silver Spider.
As an author, my family holds the rights to the books I write for at least 70 years after my passing. I'm a self-published author so I don't have to worry about rights (I don't have a comic, movie, or show of my book though so it's not quite the same circumstance).
Gosh people are ruthless! I know that may sound strange but the arguing over definitions of words and pieces of writings is so crazy to think about. Especially pieces written half a decade or longer ago.
you gotta see it for what it truly is. this is not about who actually owns these characters. they are arguing over who is in title to the money these ideas generate and disney is fighting doubly hard because losing this means they lost the major reason they bothered ot buy Marvel.
Just my opinion: the second camera setup is nice in itself, but it just looks weird to me. I'm not sure if it's because it's not head on enough or if it's just too little to the side -- Devin feels to look just past me as if he deliberately wants to avoid eye contact. It might also be because the camera is closer to him, blowing his features up somewhat.
One of the good things about the German copyright law is that it it forbids copyright transfer. Whoever creates something obtains the copyright of it and this copyright cannot be sold or otherwise transferred, the creator will always keep the copyright. The only valid transfer is inheritance if the creator dies, in which case the right can be passed on spouse, children, etc. You can only transfer usage rights, e.g. the right to duplicate content, the right to sell content, the right to make money by licensing, etc. And typically if you are a hired creator, your contract will grant some of those rights to your employer, yet the copyright itself always stays with you, even if you were hired as it is legally impossible to transfer it.
I knew of the Kirby lawsuit back in the 1980s, but didn't know there was another one in 2013. Maybe Devin can make a short explaining how they were different, or what new issues came up? You might want to look at Jim Shooter's blog. It hasn't been updated in some years, but he commented on copyrights, royalties, etc. for Marvel when he was EIC in the 80s. As someone who had to deal with both the creatives and the corporates (and pushed hard for improvements in the royalty system), he had interesting comments about what happened behind the scenes.
Objection: while promoting Ting, you implied that you had a contractual obligation not to reveal who your previous provider had been, and then dropped some hints that made it pretty clear. Presumably, as a lawyer, you wouldn't have done that unless you thought it was legal, which leads me to some questions. How was the rule written, such that it allows you to drop those hints? Presumably your provider would not happy with you dropping them. Is it possible to rewrite the contract to prohibit those hints? If not, why not? If so, what would the revised wording look like?
The agreement probably says that he can’t explicitly name his previous cell provider. If that’s the clause then there’s no harm in hinting at who it could have been as long as he doesn’t say it outright or use their intellectual property while promoting Ting Mobile.
A lawsuit like this was decided not long ago between Victor Miller and Sean Cunningham over the rights to the Friday the 13th franchise. Sean argued Victor's work was for-hire but Victor ended up winning the lawsuit.
I am curious how this lawsuit has been influenced by Todd McFarlane's "creative control" dispute and exit from Marvel in the 1990s. He went on to co-create Image Comics where artists maintain control over their creations.
Not at all, I'm assuming. This is about the creator or their estate recovering profitable copyrights. Image was about creators maintaining their rights in the first place, which I understand was kind of a failed experiment.
The one thing I would like to know is how the extension of copyright wasn't viewed as a violation of the ex post defato clause in the US constitution. (Article I, Section 9, Clause 3)
That work for hire BS is what caused Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld and others to start Image Comics where whoever created a character retains the copyright.
And then Todd did that to Neil Gaiman! But Todd paid him like $100,000 an issue and Gaiman *still* sued for ownership of the character Angela lol. (Then sold her to Marvel, I think.)
@@FordFourD-aka-Ford4D yep thats where he sold her. I think she's a long lost sister of Thor or some shit but I waiting for someone to point out how McFarlane turned around and tried the same shit he was running from. The money got to his head.
@@rogueprince1341 I mean, Spawn was *his baby* !! When you got something you started by yourself that you're willing to bet it all on, (and even pay a writer $100k an issue…) you'll understand lol.
@@FordFourD-aka-Ford4D AFAIK, McFarlane and Gaiman agreed on a certain payment, but McFarlane didn't pay. In such a case, suing seems reasonable to me.
These characters were a work for hire, created in the "Merry Marvel Way," case friggin' closed. There's a reason why some of the greatest comics artists back in the 90's started working for Image Comics. Image Comics was started by Todd McFarlane with the SPECIFIC INTENT of getting around that pesky "work for hire" problem. If any lawyer needs to defend Marvel and DC against the work for hire stuff, all they need to do is point to Image. Its entire reason for being was to pull the best artists in the business away from the work-for-hire arrangement they had with the establishment comic publishers and allow those creators to retain control of their work. It was no big secret. If you worked on stuff for Marvel/DC, you were working on THEIR stuff, not your own stuff.
Hey. I have a travel law question, if someome can help me. I recently watch a "hack" on tiktok that said that when you want to travel to a place and the direct flight is expensive because of demand you can just find a cheaper flight to another place that has a stop in the place you want to go in the first place and just leave the airport "mid travel" so you can save some money. Even more, they say you can check your bags in the airport for the direct flight, yet not pay for the travel itself or maybe ask for a partial refund or something of the sort (don't know how they would do that) and then take the cheaper flight with the stop and when you get to your airport destination take the luggage that was sent from the direct flight. But, here is the problem. People in the comments say that that is illegal and you can get sued over this. I understand the thing about letting your lugagge or bags alone in an airport is a big NO but what about the first part. Is that really ilegal or sueable? *Sorry for my english
Stories like this make me want to scream. Companies get away with so much by playing the “independent contractor,” card. They take away health insurance, job security, and intellectual property from their workers by labelling them independent contractors or sometimes they call them consultants. It means the same thing, and they tell the workers, your take home pay is higher as a result.
I actually hope Marvel loses these characters and by extension Disney, That company has too much IPs imo. Also Ironic for Disney's own draconic copyright laws changes to fk them over!
For those interested in the Howard the Duck character, look up the Howard the Duck Switcharoo. It's a clever way how the creators Steve Gerber and Val Mayerik technically took back their character.
Parker would own most of the pictures because he sells the pictures as a freelancer rather than being a salaried employee of the Daily Bugle however the Bugle has in it's contracts that they own the copyright to the photos and have licence to put them in a published book with no permission
I was curious if, when things go out of copyright, the setting of the story is considered an "element" of the story. This is to say, if old Captain America stories fell out of copyright due to timing, and someone else was going to do a Captain America story (can't call it that on the front, though, trademark, amirite?), can the still set it in modern day? Or would the story itself (for copyright reasons, not creative ones) still have to be set in the 1940's?
The irony of Stan Lee's family trying to get the rights to any characters after Lee spent decades screwing people out of credit should not be lost. Jack Kirby is laughing from beyond the grave
Jack Kirby’s estate also sued Disney for money. Stan Lee, whatever his faults, did contribute to Marvel surviving as a company and I’d rather see Spider-Man profiting his estate rather than Disney. Likewise the Fantastic Four should definitely be owned by Kirby’s estate and Doctor Strange should go to Ditko’s estate
@@BeeHatGuy Just fine, a major part of communism is sharing with the people who need it. A fisher can't live on only fish, a farmer can't live on only carrots, and its the same with art. We are at a point in history where we can more than provide for the material needs of everybody, so in a system where a person's financial security isn't dependant on their market value, it doesn't matter if they're an artist, a doctor, or even unemployed, they get what they need all the same.
Where did you get this information from? We are going to have about 10 billion people on this planet in less than 10 years why would we even have close to enough food for everyone?
I hate to say it, because Disney sucks as a company, but if they lose the right to some of these names the people who would lose the most would be us as fans, and whoever ended up with the rights to these movies. With the exception of the original Spider-Man trilogy, I think history has shown up plenty of times what other companies do with these properties, and how their movies usually go. How much money did the James Garfield Spider-Man movies make again? I forget, how did the previous Hulk movies do? Remind me again how popular the last Fan4stic movie was? I think I've made my point.
The sad part of all of this is that under the copyright law that existed when a lot of these works were made, most of them would be in the public domain right now. Anyone could make Batman or Superman movie, not just Disney or Sony or whoever currently owns it. It would be free for everyone and none of this would be an issue. However this lawsuit goes, the public are the losers.
Doesn't that assume that the public are better off with a ton of knock off productions? One could argue that it couldn't get much worse for the DC franchise characters but Marvel has had its act together and a bunch knock off works could seriously mess up the concept of the MCU
@@nctpti2073 Disney's whole empire was built on the public domain. It wouldn't stop Disney or Marvel from doing what they do, but you could also get people doing much more creative things and using the material in ways that Disney overlords would never allow. But the main point is, it's part of our culture, and that culture is owned by Disney, when it should belong to everyone.
@@jupiterkansas It was, but with characters that had been public domain for a couple hundred years. And at a time when it was a lot more expensive to mass produce media using them. To say that Marvel characters are 'part of our culture' and therefore should be ours is, to me, like saying that any and every other asset in reality should be the same. No land ownership anymore since the land has been there for far longer than 95 years? Might sound good to some but then... how do you decide who gets to live on that land or otherwise use it? It gets non-functional really quick. And similar goes for fictional characters, arguably even moreso since they are far more mutable than land. You can end up with a situation where these 'cultural icons' are no longer in any way recognizable as such.
@@nctpti2073 It's more like Disney's lease on Yellowstone is up, and now were going to make it a National Park. The public would own and control the land, which is different than "no land ownership." But you can't really compare intellectual property to actual property because actual property is a finite commodity, and intellectual property is just an expression of an idea. You can't really own an idea forever. That's why copyright has a specific term limit. The only reason copyright exists is to encourage creation. It's not supposed to last forever, and since current terms are longer than most people live, it's essentially forever. The length of time that has passed shouldn't make a difference, nor the cost or difficulty to produce art. Those are arbitrary measures. When they created Superman in the 1930s, they knew the copyright would only last until, at most, the 1980s, and after that it would be public domain. It didn't prevent them from creating or building a business around Superman, and Superman should have been public domain for the last 30-40 years. If that had happened, Superman would still be Superman just like Hamlet is still Hamlet, and Warner Brothers could still make their movies. They just wouldn't have exclusive rights, and maybe other filmmakers or artists or storytellers might have come up with even more interesting takes on the character (are the Warners movies really true to the spirit of 1930s Superman anyway? No, but they're the only ones that get to say what modern Superman is like.) But the damage was done way back in 1976, and we have to live with it. At least things from the 1920s are finally starting to enter the public domain again. Superman (the first comics, anyway) will be public domain in about 15 years.
@@jupiterkansas Let's take your Yellowstone analogy. Say instead of becoming a national park, Yellowstone literally became 'free land' that anyone could use freely as they wished. Do you really think it would still be as amazing as it is? And do you really think that when any of these characters were created, anyone was thinking about copyright considerations 95 years down the line? Really really unlikely.....
No, have you seen what Ken Penders did to Sonic Archery Comics? He stole half the cast of the comic form the comic. You want Marvel and Disney to win. Or the characters are just gone forever.
Objction- when Edward R.Murrow became a CBS correspondent during World War II he was hired by the network but his delivery on the air, choice of timbre, was not chosen by the network. Stan Lee’s take on Spiderman such as the character’s attitude towards his adversaries and his New York attitude reflected Lee’s choices which were approved by Marvel’s fans.
Lieber is pronounced LEE-ber. Larry Lieber is Stan Lee's younger brother. Stan just shortened the name, back when it was, shall we say, expedient for people with ethnic names to change them to something more "American" sounding, to avoid prejudice.
Isn't it weird that (most of) these creators, who are now deceased, hardly ever tried to sue Marvel during their lifetime, but now their children are doing so? I guess they didn't think their inheritance was big enough.
They're the only people who could sue them to be fair. Disney's been eating up IP's for almost 100 years now and show's no signs of ever letting any of them go public domain.
not really, many of them watched the previous cases where those with more resources lost. Just because it's ways been that way doesn't mean it's right. Why was Disney pushing so hard for public domain when it benefited them decades ago? Many of their famous animations were based on other peoples work and they wanted the freedom to use it. If the original creators are deceased then make it public domain so everyone has access to it
Well Howard the Duck got quite a few appearances in the recent What If? Series so I could see him getting a new film. Or at least a big part in an upcoming film.
I would love to see a video on independent contractor. Maybe a good topic could be the Obama Hope poster? Great channel. My reading comprehension is not very good, your videos are very in depth and allow me to go full lawyer on my attorney wife. I lose most of the time, but i have a fighting chance now.
What was Stan Lee's employment contract? Did he and the others, agree as terms of employment that their works for hire were not theirs and that of their employers? If not, then someone needs to produce a licensing agreement originating near the time of creations of the works.
They do not need to agree in their employment to contract that they will not own their works if they are hired to make comic books then the comic books belong to their boss including the characters in it.
I remember watching some other video about this very same topic and they had something in their paychecks that was like ''me cashing in this check means it was work for hire'' something like that anyway.
Well, it's not always clear. If you're an author and you agree to produce a certain number of titles under contract, you are still the named author and have ownership of the work. But if you're a staff writer for contributing pieces for publication with other writers, maybe not. ALWAYS set the terms of the relationship in writing at the start of the engagement.
@@lohphat Yes, setting the terms of the relationship is good advice, but it doesn't change the fact here that (at least as far as I'm aware), Stan Lee and co, produced those characters while being paid to produce comics for Marvel, which would seem to me to mean that they would have to prove that Marvel _didn't_ have ownership over those characters rather than the other way around.
Sort of a weird question, but before you went into your advertising sections you talked about being reimbursed for supplies. Is that a part of being considered an employee? If the artist used their own equipment, in this case pen and ink, does that factor into this litigation?
⚖ What should I cover next?
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What do you think about the insurrection goin on. At department of Interior
Real Lawyer Reacts to Presumed Innocent (1990)
Would it be possible to react with a more in-depth look into Legal moments for "The Devil's Advocate" Including the meeting between lawyers & their fields of experience?
How about Dbrand v. Sony in the case of Playstation 5 side panels made by 3rd parties companies and how Patent and Patent pending affect this possible decision.
Can you do American Crime Story? There's a lot of stuff in there that could be cool to break down
I'd like to see this definition of "employee" applied to Uber, Lyft, etc. Corporations are willing to argue that people are employees when it comes to copyright and work for hire, but the same exact circumstances count as contractors when it comes to unemployment and paid time off.
I hope uber and lyft try to officially make people contractors as that’s what people working their want.
Under all circumstances, corporations want to have their cake and eat it too.
Contesting blatant hypocrisy like this requires money. Something most people don't have!
Its a little different. These artists were working with the intent to promote MARVEL interests. They didn't make Spider Man and try to sell it to DC. It wasn't an existing character that they were shopping around and just landed at marvel. If you drive for Uber you are working for yourself, Uber is the facilitator between you and the customer. They facilitate the ride, handle the app, process the payment and take their cut. Its a pretty different system entirely. Also, you are not dealing with any copyright with uber.
As much as I dislike the "employes are contractors" BS, I dont think Uber or Lyft are interested in claiming the intelectual products of their drivers.
I can’t wait for Marvel to debut legally distinct and royalty free characters like Arachnid man, Steel Man, and the incredible Bulk.
Hulk Hogan already owns the rights to The Hulk. He bought that around 2005. So The Incredible Bulk would be an infringement on his name.
What about the amazing bulk?
Guy Steel!
No Steel Guy sounds way better
Sounds like the Simpsons and their board games. "Parchoosy, duopoly,"
@@caballo9500 Nobody wants anything to do with that movie/character.
(Reads title)
"Are we really gonna underestimate how scarily powerful Disney's legal department is?"
Capitalism separating workers from the fruits of their labor once again, shock level zero 🤢🤮🤢
I don't think its about Disney's legal department being scary, but how the law is set up definitely benefits Disney more than the original creators of characters
What are you talking about bro, name a system where this kind of exploitation happen?
@@ka9k148 the one we live in?
Where this type of exploitation wouldn't happen my bad.
We need to revert back to the original model of copyright expiring after 20 years. 70 AFTER the death of the author is ridiculous and was lobbied for by corporations so they could continue to profit for as long as possible.
Ironically Disney was one of the biggest companies pushing for that and they literally built up their company on the public domain which they later basically killed
Not necessarily. If the author has the rights, his family will benefit from it for few generations. I think that's what the first intentions were about this. But like many things, good intentions don't always lead to what you expect
@@2000ets i'd agree with you if it were ever actually the author, but it's usually some huge faceless corporation that bought the rights
@@2000ets nah the accumulation of generational wealth is a blight upon society. Inheritances should be limited to personal property and a family home.
@@kaiserruhsam You're very mistaken. Generational wealth disappears typically within 3 generations.
Consider this: when Cornelius Vanderbilt died his estate was worth 105 million which is anywhere from 3 billion to 255 billion today. Let's say it was 30 billion in today's money. His son that inherented 95% doubled it's value in 9 years. Gloria Vanderbilt (Cornelius' great great granddaughter) inherited a trust of 4 million worth 74 million in today's money. She died with a million left.
Not trying to say 74 million is nothing, but its certainly not billions.
The Hiltons are another anomaly of still being wealthy more than 3 generations out.
@@2000ets The problem is 90% of the time is is *not* the author but some faceless company. More over the argument falls apart with computer software - there is no way any of that will be useable when it formally becomes public domain.
Honestly the whole copyright law scares me as an artist, it's kinda the reason I never want to work with other artists or any businesses. I'd rather do everything on my own then deal with copyright issues of working with someone else.
Yeah, and fair enough; it's is its own risk/reward, you take greater financial risk, in exchange for complete ownership. Otherwise, you reduce your risk by working for commission, for the price of losing control of your work.
That's a legitimate fear. Honestly the best idea is if you have any projects you want to keep, work off the clock on them and then make it independently. A lot of artists on UA-cam who have formally, or still are, major studios have done that.
@@X9523-z3v Art and music are more democratized than ever though. "This generation" has it incredibly easy compared to previous generations when it comes to distributing your own stuff online. Mumble rap is a whole genre of music spawned from artists who distribute their own work over soundcloud - love it or hate it, it's been a damn successful venue of independent self-publishing in music.
That makes sense, but different copyright issues catch lone-wolves and little fish. So you probably have to trust a mentor, business, and/or attorney sooner or later, as part of preparing for success. Once you get reliable help, that fear of collaborating or working for a studio might turn into just another tradeoff, like how much and what kind of insurance suits your business.
It’s not that scary. All you need is a boilerplate contract stating you are licensing your work to X for Y amount of time for Z in fees.
Read up on how Marvel was receiving royalties from the WWF for 20 years over the name Hulk Hogan. Or how the Bare Naked Ladies practically retired after getting hired to do the theme song for the Big Bang Theory. That one song earned them more money than they ever could have dreamed of otherwise.
Just have a lawyer read any contract before signing it. It might cost you anywhere from $50 to $250 upfront for that one service, but you could make much more than that off the first royalty check.
2:01 "Now no one knows what Ditko worked on in his last years…"
*This is absolutely false* your honor. Comic fans know EXACTLY what Steve Ditko was working on in his last years. He would literally mail a copy of his latest comic to anyone who'd sent in the money for it. Heck, even I have a copy of a latter day Ditko comic (that I bought off a fan at NY Comic Con who coincidentally had interviewed Ditko).
Steve Ditko was _absolutely_ doing his regular usual thing - making comics *on his own terms* _SUPER_ independently - until the end of his life. They're not my thing, personally, but hats off to the guy for sticking to his convictions!
Overruled. Unless you are part of the niche market who knew about, and participated in, this scheme it is safe to say that the colloquial term of “nobody” is just that and not to be interpreted as an absolute statement that literally nobody knew.
@Coding Crusader Hey, whatever makes you happy, man. Glad you felt something for yourself when you said that.
And uhhhh double reverse over-over-ruled no backsies lol I sincerely hope you have a great night
What may hurt Marvel in this case, which you didn't touch on, is that they wrote contracts on the back of the checks they paid to their artists for years, which meant that in order to get paid they had to sign that they were giving up the rights to their work. This practice was and is illegal, and the fact that they did it in the first place could be a pretty good sign of proof that marvel didn't consider them employees. Since they wouldn't need to use this tactic if they already knew they owned the rights.
That’s a very good point
I mean they just chose to stop having them sign their checks that way and made them sign actual contracts that gave the rights to Marvel, so nothing changed.
@@NottherealLucifer well maybe for other creators later, but I’m unaware of any contract with Kirby and Ditko during the start of the Marvel age in the early 60s.
So they were paid to create the characters, signed that they didnt own the characters and still claim to own the characters?...
@@kidShibuya They were paid for work, as all creators are, but were illegally forced to sign contracts in order to validate their cheques to get the money they had already earned. If they were being paid to create said characters, why require the extra contract to relinquish the rights to said characters. Using an illegal practice I should restate.
I feel like an more accurate title for this piece would be "Why Disney Could Possibly Have To Share Their Marvel Superhero Profits (But Probably Won't)"
Agreed, bit that isn't as click baity.
"How Disney rewrites Copyright Law, because Politicians are Cheaper than Lawyers."
Right? Like this is really bad phrasing. This like many other recent lawsuits or contract negotiations have to do with the fact that Disney just doesn’t want to share profits.
Personal opinion: Disney owes the artist whose work that they make money off of.
Came here to say this but you beat me to it
@@ithlium2284 Disney takes larger shares of opening weekend box office money than other studios, too, on top of owning almost everything. It seems pretty clear they want to pretty much own Hollywood entertainment in its entirety. Crazy how anti-trust laws didn't kick in with the Fox acquisition. Honestly, it would not be completely implausible for them to buy out Paramount at some point, and possibly snatch up Columbia/Tri-Star from Sony. Lion's Gate, it is impressive that they are still their own entity, but that probably won't last forever. We may eventually be down to three conglomerates: Disney (which also includes Fox, Marvel, and Lucasfilm), Time-Warner (now owned by AT&T, and primarily includes Warner Brothers, New Line, and DC), and NBC/Universal (the latter also competes with Disney in the theme park business).
I heard about this case a while ago and immediately looked to see if you covered it since you do a good job of breaking down legal disputes in an easy to understand way. Glad you finally covered it.
And I'm double glad because he's a literal IP attorney
The people who want the characters have no chance in court
It's due to the Friday The 13th
@@bestlaptop_psn that is both parties so you're either saying something really smart or really dumb.
@@thugpug4392 Disney has no chance in losing and the family of the creators have no chance in winning
More fuel to my growing belief that, being incapable of themselves actually creating intellectual property, a corporate entity should not be able to own intellectual property - and they sure as hell shouldn't have stronger intellectual property protections than the individual authors that the corporate entity must rely on to create intellectual property in the first place.
If it can't _have_ ideas, it probably shouldn't _own_ ideas.
this would go down a rabbit hole quickly though.. because then any logo would be owned by the respective creator, not the company that commisioned it for their use. basically its the end of Company Logos and stuff.
Stan Lee was famously promised a royalty percentage on the Marvel comics movies - and didn't see a cent. Somehow, Hollywood movies are never actually "profitable".
You can make anything look successful or look like a flop in capitalism. Just takes a bit of dicking around with an accountant
Why does it seem oddly satisfying to know that Disney's constant desire to extend copyright could make them lose it's most lucrative characters as well.
To me it's kind of a double edged sword, it's Marvel losing their big characters, but it's Disney losing their big characters
@@CurrentNetPriceTanaka It would just mean that they would need to pay the creators of the characters when using them in their films. Seems more than fair to me.
When you put your hand in a crocodile's mouth, it will bite down... Not a matter of if, only when.
@@CurrentNetPriceTanaka Any loss for Disney is a win for the world.
Devin is cosplaying as the Hulk because he's worried about boxing Doctor Mike.
Devin: oh sh*t, they’re on to me 😬
With a face like that
Could you blame him?
She-hulk is indeed a lawyer. I guess we can call Devin the Heagle?
Thumbnail accurate
They're gonna box?
I just think that 90 years is probably too long for works to be excluded from public domain because culturally they are already in the public domain but legally they aren't.
Thanks to Disney.
Because of the Internet, just about any work “culturally” enters the public domain, because anyone can create and share fanfiction of that intellectual property. Like Sonic and Mario fanfiction for example
@@faded9581 Thank you for making a better case for a shorter period until it should legally be determined public domain.
@@faded9581 well even a with stricter standard, the rule still applies.
If you go to a concert and sing the artists song back at them, that's basically copyright infringement? Or is it you all making a new work?
It just seems to undervalue works if you only value them interms of the work and meaning the original artist brought to it.
Spiderman isn't just that original creation, it's the memories you have reading the stories, it's all the dodgy jokes and memes, it's part of culture. How can someone claim a monopoly over all that?
Life of the author plus 70 years could get up to 160 years. Surely authors of the 1860s would have written more if they knew their great-great-great grandkids could get movie royalties for it.
The dumbest thing in all of this is that copyright is so long now that the authors are dead and 60 years have passed since they were created, but people are still arguing who gets to make movies with these characters. They should be on the public domain.
They use Copyright as a sort of verification/canon system to make sure that "low effort" versions don't get through and risk damaging the image of the brand. Of course, that also means shutting down fan projects as well, so it's a double edge sword as those making tributes get handed C&Ds even if they didn't plan to monetise their content
Not only is brand image a worry, but also the public doesnt want to go see 3-4 different spiderman movies from 4 different companies. For the general audience it will get VERY confusing and possibly make the brand go downhill
The fact that simply finding how close a relationship between someone and a company can determine whether or not they are a contractor is bizarre and just sounds wrong.
I think what it will ultimately come down to in that case is whether or not Kirby's work fell within the scope of a broader Marvel project. So, for example, if he was writing portions of a larger Marvel comic or series and the works he produced would not be functionally usable on their own, I would think those works probably fall under the heading of "for hire". If he was writing complete, unique comics and they were simply being published through Marvel, you could make a case that he was an independent contractor. This is just me inventing legal rules, but that's how I would approach it.
I could also see a case if they created their characters independently and pitched them to marvel, rather than it being a collaborative process. For example, if I created a new character, and said "hey Marvel, want to publish this?" That would be different than "Hey, let's brainstorm some mew characters to act as new spiderman villains"
@@andrewtorrens7790 Yeah, that old school "Marvel method" was a weird in between the two, so how the law applies gets tricky here.
I don't think we'll ever get rid of that distinction or stop needing to be particular about the difference between being a contractor and working as part of a company, but it's an area to be extra careful of, as it's ripe for potential abuse. Your gut revulsion to those with power trying to manipulate that distinction is well-founded and if I ever see a good way to solve the issue forever, it has my full attention.
Ownership is 9/10ths of the law. And you'll understand when billions of dollars are at stake it becomes worthwhile to take small matters to court.
Haha I get that. Marvel should just re-negotiate at like…1%.
Even 1% would be amazing and helpful to the families and Disney wouldn’t hurt at all.
Capitalism separating workers from the fruits of their labor once again, shock level zero 🤢🤮🤢
Yeah because the families started it not Disney. It reminds me of how Stan Lee's daughter was nothing but a lazy leech who wanted Lee's money and he let her mistreat him and get away with it.
It is true a small amount would be plenty for the families.
I think only the live person should have rights to their content, not their family members.
Not having ALL THE MONEY hurts Disney. Befause they're a blood sucking parasite I MEAN a for profit company
@@cristlejohnson4900 And a megacorporation has more right to these works? As the video points out, Disney is to blame for copyrights continuing for as long as they do… specifically so they can farm intellectual property that arguably should be in the public domain.
@@inefffable You too can share in the profits of the blood sucking parasite at ~$170.36 per share
TBH, I hope both sides lose. If copyrights hadn't been extended in the '90s, Spider-Man would have been public domain a long time ago. Extending copyright as long as they have has contributed to a lack of creativity. It's the reason we have so many sequels and reboots rather than original works of art. These laws have also been twisted in such a way that they don't protect the creator, they protect whoever owns the copyright whether they had anything to do with the work or not.
See replies for some corrections to this. I see it as more of a conversation so I'm keeping what I said originally.
That would be Disney and their lobbyists who did that.
Yes, the laws and the intervals extended all this time have not been for the benefit of the creative people, but of corporate holding companies and heirs of the estates of creators. The spirit of copyright law was always supposed to be to duly compensate creators for their distinct artwork, and protect them from theft. If the copyright protected the creators until the end of their lifetimes, or for some specified interval (e.g. you have 50 years to make whatever money you can off your story, play, song, drawing, sculpture), whichever one is longer, who could complain?
If the copyrights hadn't been extended in the 90s, the 1978 Copyright Act would still have been in place. That set the copyright term for corporate ownership at 75 years. Spider-Man was created in 1962. So he wouldn't have gone into public domain until 2037 (technically, January 1 2038), not "a long time ago". (The 1998 Act basically only added 20 years to that.) (For creator-owned works, it was the life of the author plus 50 years, and Spider-Man was created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, who both died in 2019, so it'd be even longer if you considered that term, and the 1998 Act added 20 years to that as well.)
(The best one could argue is if Spider-Man were held to the copyright terms at the time of his original publication, which could be renewed to a maximum of 56 years. Which means he COULD have entered public domain after 2018, but that's still not "a long time ago", and the 1978 Act specifically superseded the 1909 law.)
And, of course, he'd still be protected by trademark, which can be renewed indefinitely as long as they're in use.
@@GreenLuthor good to know. That trademark bit just gives me more to be disgruntled with. Not that I plan on making any of these movies, but we don't need MCU Phase 50. Nor do we need more heirs to unearned fortunes in this country. It's mostly me grumpy old man style shouting at clouds, I know. The rest is snobbery.
Yet another batman movie was announced, to make sure they keep copyright. It's just sad at this point.
I have to say that I find the decision in the Ditko case absolutely insane. They didn't try to argue that he WASN'T a freelancer, but that because he had consistent work he should still be treated like he was a normal employee despite lacking any formal agreement? It seems like the court decided that because he was successful as a freelancer he didn't really count as one, which is baffling to me.
Makes perfect sense to me. If you're a successful freelancer, you presumably have the means to shop around various publishers. If both the publisher/studio, and the creator assume that the creator is going to create a comic and that the publisher will publish it, there is an implicit contract. If every time he produced something, he tendered it to several studios, or indicated in some other meaningful way that he didn't expect that he was creating something specifically for marvel then he would have had an argument.
@@Musikur "implicit contract"? So not an actual contract. The argument that he should have tendered to several publishers doesn't make sense, even now if you're an author or comic book writer you will mostly likely have a specific publisher in mind based on what you produce. I don't see how that implies a contract
If intellectual property law was designed to promote the growth of creativity and useful arts, we must all ask the question of whether or not it still does. Once upon a time, pursuing that end required protecting publishers. But in the environment that we have today, where the internet has made it possible to self-publish like never before, is siding with traditional publishers as a matter of policy still best? Isn't it time to give more bargaining chips to the creators/authors/artists?
Yes. I can understand that an artist (or a company) need protection so their newest works do not get copied immediatly, and even to a lesser degree the artist wishes that he can control his work even long after he made enough money out of it. But the public also has an interest that work will be free eventually, and not in 130-160 years or more (author did something in his 20s, lives to 80, and then 70-100 years after death in some jurisdictions).
But this is not the creator it's their nephews. Your actually arguing for worse copyright laws that would kill everything. Now not only is marvel or Disney not allowed to make stuff but no one ever.
@@FriedrichHerschel For what it's worth, I think that the growth of culture is so fast now that copyright/trademark/patent protections must last only 10 years since 1st publication or introduction to the market or first filing before the relevant government office, whichever comes first. Period. Why? If you haven't made millions by then, you need to make something new. IP Law protection is so lengthy that creators and publishers alike rest on their laurels and actually stunt the growth of creativity.
except, even if your argument is true (and I'm not commenting either way), the arrangements which are being discussed here happened looooong before the internet. And it's not fair to hold arrangements from 50 years ago to the circumstances of the modern world.
@@Musikur fair
Objection: Howard the Duck showed up in the post credit scene of the Original Guardians of the Galaxy, so he might show up again in future movies.
He has had several appearances since as well: Seen with the yellow sex workers in GotG 2, took part in the battle for earth in Avengers Endgame, and features in What If?
@@smifull what if is technically a television series, so Disney can use any character they have the tv rights for, like how wolverine and the fantastic four showed up in avengers earth mightiest heroes, i believe that's also the reason why spider-man's suit in that what if episode was slightly different from the mcu one
@@k1llertoad all tv shows fall under the mcu name
if you pause near the beginning of the movie you can see a hippie duck standing next to what looks like a pot plant among the photos on the wall
Stan Lee was seen in a Marvel movie reading the script for the movie Mallrats.
Does that mean Jay and Silent Bob are part of the MCU?
I'd like to see your take on why United States vs. Paramount Pictures shouldn't be applied in a modern context to prevent movie studios like Disney from owning the means of distribution, i.e. a streaming service? [hint, it should apply]
Well Apple agreed to never get involved in the music space in the court rulings with Apple records see how that went
This would also mean streaming services can’t be studios, so no Netflix or Hulu originals
Studios owning the means of distribution? Sound Commie to me.
@@benholroyd5221 no no... Its workers owning means of production! This is commie.
I believe that got recently overturned? Something like that, at least.
Walt Disney: *Loses the rights to Oswald the Rabbit in 1928* The Universe will suffer for this for the rest of eternity!
😆😆😆
So are companies like Uber and Doordash on the opposite side of Disney here? From my understanding, Marvel is arguing that Jack Kirby was indeed an employee despite there being no formal contract and Kirby’s work being mostly self directed. But Doordash and others would like to see their workers as independent contractors, not employees, despite an Uber driver having a lot less freedom in their work than Kirby did.
They are, and that's the weird cross section that brings together copyright law, uber drivers, comic book artists, and labor rights
Yes, because if they are employees they must be paid benefits like sick leave, etc but not if they are independent contractors.
They have all the uncertainty and risks of being freelancers with none of the freedom. YAY!
No, they're not on the opposite side, Disney is just saying whatever suits them. If it suited them for those artists to NOT be employees - they would've said that, too.
Jackson’s purchase of the Lennon-McCartney catalog permanently broke his friendship with Sir Paul.
Didn't he refuse to sell the rights back to him?
Paul shouldve been more shrewd imo. His loss
@@TheRatsintheWalls McCartney’s suggestion to Jackson im pretty sure which is what makes the situation funnier
Paul: Hey Michael, you know music rights is a great business.
Michael: Cool, I'll just buy yours then.
Paul: *Surprised pikachu face*
Devin mentions this in his Taylor Swift vid
This sounds like the opposite line of reasoning Disney used to extend the copyright to Mickey Mouse for a million years. If the profits of these creative works aren't going to their creators or the families of their creators, I don't see any reason why they shouldn't be public domain. But I guess that's more of a moral position than a legal one.
I wonder if an argument could be made for Spider-Man, because from what I remember, the company that hired Lee and Ditko for that comic run definitely did not want them to publish a comic about him. The way I heard it told, they put him in the last issue of a comic run because they figured they couldn't get fired after the last issue. Would that put doubt in the "scope of his or her employment" or "specially ordered for use" wording in the Works Made For Hire code?
It was an anthology book; they weren't hired for a "comic run". And the publisher, Martin Goodman, agreed to let them put Spider-Man in the last issue because it was being cancelled, so he figured it wouldn't matter much one way or the other. (Goodman didn't think an insect-themed hero would sell, but he still approved the story for the final issue.) (When Spider-Man turned out to be popular, Marvel decided to just give him his own book rather than continue the anthology.) (Also, Martin Goodman was Stan Lee's cousin, so Lee got a lot of freedom anyway.) But neither Lee nor Ditko was getting fired over putting Spider-Man in the book, under any circumstances.
@@GreenLuthor Lee (and I say this as a huge fan of him) had a faulty memory and when he couldn't recall the original events would make up a new story. The notion that Goodman put Spidey into an already cancelled title appears to be the case here. If you look at Amazing Spider-Man #1-2, they each had two stories. Half-sized stories were at the time used in anthology titles but not regular titles. This suggests that Spider-Man was meant to be an ongoing feature in Amazing Fantasy and Goodman hadn't cancelled the title when he approved the feature. The most likely sequence of events is this: 1. Amazing Fantasy #15 gets published. 2. Goodman sees the sales figures for an earlier issue of Amazing Adult Fantasy (the previous name for the title) and only then cancels the title, unwilling to wait and see how the Spider-Man feature did (keep in mind that back then you had to wait a long time to see sales figures for a published issue). 3. Goodman sees the sales figures for Amazing Fantasy #15 and grants Spider-Man his own title, with material intended for Amazing Fantasy #16-19 becoming Amazing Spider-Man #1-2.
I don't want the movies to end, at the same time I don't like companies hording properties. I would argue that I'd the artists and writers was employed by marvel to make comics, that would be the same as a programmer employed to make programs, or a designer employed to make logos package designs etc... So then marvel should have the rights. If the artist made the character and approached marvel to publish but, like most authors, they should keep the right to their characters. Also after the creators death, the character or work in question should enter the public domain.
Even if Disney lost all rights, why would the movies end? Spiderman IP is worthless if its not being used. The heirs don't want the rights so they can lock them in a safe and never touch them, they want to use the rights to make money. The most that would happen is that the IP would transfer to the heirs and Disney would then license those rights to continue making movies, and the heirs would receive a share of the earnings. If the new IP owners ask for too much or get too difficult, then Disney just retires that franchise and continues to profit from their own catalogue as well as LucasFilm, Fox and all the rest of the IP they own. There is no scenario in which the rights transfer and that somehow "forces" Disney to stop making movies and no scenario in which a change of rights mean we never see another movie containing these characters. Disney and other studios will just have to bid for the licence, and if they don't win the bid, someone else would and those characters would still appear in films.
The movies would still get made, Disney would just have to pay a bit more to the estates.
that's not really the same thing. As programmers you are hired for a specific project to write code and paid based on the lines of code. That's just not always the case with comic books, many of the creators visualized those characters in their own time in between what they were actually hired to do.
This doesn't make sense to me - the first artist was hired to do a piece, he did it and the courts decided that the commissioned piece's copyright was his. Marvel had a loose agreement with Kirby and he offered his comics to them, which they could always turn down and the courts said he didn't own the rights to his works? I mean... if the first one wasn't "for hire" then Kirby shouldn't have been either - wonder if this is a case of "Money makes the world go around... and the judges agree with you"?
The difference here is the amount of work. The previous instance was a one time deal, whereas Kirby was being offered work on a regular basis for years.
The idea is that if someone hires you to do a one time job and then you're done, you're an independent contractor, however if you're working exclusively for them and you're doing regular work (meaning you're always working for them, with the exception of some time off) for a long period of time, then you're no different than an employee.
Now don't get me wrong, I think this sucks and is incredibly exploitive, but the difference between the two cases is clear.
What's important is that what incentives the creation of the work. If the artist made it because he wanted to and later decided to sell/publish it then it's his property. If he made it because a company (in this case Marvel) asked him to and payed him for it then it's the company's property. It all depends on the motivation.
Just like if you invent a new type of car then it's your intellectual property but if you do it because Chevrolet payed you for it then it is theirs. Even if they payed after you invented it.
@@btetirick Depends on if it's a "right to work" state or not. There's no contract of employment in many states
@@chrismanuel9768 that's actually why this distinction was created, so they had a framework for determining what an independent contractor is and what a regular employee is.
@@HomoErectusIsAFunnyName If Chevrolet said they needed a new car, and I made one, then It would still be my IP, as they didn't pay me, nor ordered anything specific and they would not be forced to buy the finished result if they didn't want to - wasn't that the deal Kirby had with Marvel? As I understood it, Marvel would say they needed a comic or certain panels and Kirby would draw that, but he would only be paid if they chose to buy it, so it ought to be his IP's as he never was obligated nor paid to work, but only sold the finished product.
Not a fan of that side view camera, feels like I'm in a meeting and just listening to someone talk among themselves, much prefer the front facing camera where it feels like you're informing me. Other than that, once again a very enjoyable video.
agreed
The entire video that threw me off. That three quarters view isn't great. Just visual commentary. Keep up the great work! I love your videos
It's probably a youtube algorithm type of thing, like frequent cuts and closeups keep the audience watching
As a small child even. From the lower side angle. Waiting for ice cream money. Yes, the side angle is like an angle for public office.
@@genghisgalahad8465 Yeah, even worse, and you are right. That is how it feels like. ;)
Just when you thought the Spider Man debacle was over, this comes up.
Sigh 😔
As much as I love Marvel’s IP, I absolutely disagree with copyright law as-is because it grants IP in perpetuity to companies, which are treated like basically immortal people. Even if a company folds, their assets are snapped up by another corp or a holding company, and the “immortal ownership” of that IP continues. IMO there needs to be a set limit on ALL copyright - doesn’t matter if its 50 years, 75 years, 150 years, whatever, just not “infinity and beyond” (oh, I forgot, Disney owns that, too, sorry.)
This is not a good thing for everything from art to scientific endeavor, to historical documentation. A company can literally buy up a property, sit on it because it’s too similar to something else that they own, and effectively kill it because they don’t want the competition.
there is a limit in copyright ,95 years
I don’t disagree, but I do want to point out that copyright, trademark, and patent are all different.
Things Products and technology are typically covered by patents which do have a time limit (20 years I think) for precisely the reason you state. Copyright typically only covers works of art.
Of course with anything legal things can get muddy.
@@wnsjimbo2863 - did they change that, or is it still 95 years from death of author?
Um... Copyright does have an expiration date for companies too. It's just 120 years. (Or 95 after publication)
@@queenannsrevenge100 No, 95 is specifically for companies. 70 years is after the creator dies. And 95 years is after publication not after creation.
Client: "Now might be a time to file a lawsuit."
Devin rips off his Chinos: "That's my secret, I'm always filing lawsuits!"
As someone who's going into the comics industry as a career, the intellectual property ownership rights (including copyright) is so screwy.
I feel bad for the creators of these characters, but their situation is why creator rights are much more important and carefully considered these days in comics.
But the general understand is if it's made for hire, the company owns it and that applies both for the artist or writers who are credited as creators, or in the case of fan works.
And honestly I'd like to see a breakdown on how all this stuff works for comics and such on a legal ground- and this video is a fun, and informative starting point!
I mean, you write a comic, take it to a bunch of different publishers, and don't sign anything which says you give the rights over.... It's the same as for a novel, albeit I guess the barriers to entry are probably higher for a comic book artist.
@@Musikur not true at all.
There are options to retain the rights, and get a miniscule royalty check, or sign away the rights and get a bigger check.
Not to mention the fact that the work for hire issues still prevails to this day. with most major publishers making sure the most the creator sees in those cases is credit for the work.
The comics industry, due to being seen as "low brow" for so long has a lot more predatory contracts.
That has been changing in recent years, especially with growth in the self publishing area, especially with the advent of crowd funding.
But it's still far more complicated than "don't sign the wrong contracts"
Because thanks to a series of writers in the 90s who considered themselves "superstar artists" Marvel and DC were pretty much permanently turned off on the idea of "creator owned" making the problems Ditko, Kirby, Lieber, and even Lee experienced far worse than they should have been.
Just look up how hard it was for Kirby to get back his original artwork.
It's a fascinating mess which is why I'm so curious to see what a Lawyers in depth take on it all is.
Why do you feel bad? They SOLD the rights.
There are tons of problems with suppositions at the center of the Kirby ruling and these later actions. Until recent decades, the publishers did not have employment contracts and the artists provided their own materials to produce the work, though, at some point, marvel was provided it's own drawing pages. What's more relevant is that in many cases, marvel did not originate the character or series, or assign the artist to do it. many were conceived by writers and artists and pitched to the editor-in-chief and many characters were created without the direction or input of Marvel, including Stan Lee as Editor-in-Chief. Famously, in the Fantastic Four, with the debut of Galactus, Jack Kirby decided the world-devouring giant needed a herald, to announce his coming and created the Silver Surfer. Writer/editor Stan Lee was unaware of the Surfer until Kirby turned in the artwork, for Stan to write the dialogue, to accompany the visuals. That was when Kirby explained who the Surfer was. Kirby and Ditko both originated plots and characters without direction from Stan, as he was busy with other things and they had long track records of generating their own stories. More often than not, Stan was reacting to the material for the first time, when he went to work on the dialogue, sometimes even reinterpreting what Kirby and Ditko had created. This was a major factor in Ditko leaving Marvel (along with hollow promises of sharing in merchandise, made by publisher Martin Goodman). Ditko and Lee became so contentious that Ditko would work on stories on his own, without input from Stan, and turn in the finished art. Dr Strange was especially a product of Ditko's origination, while the collaboration on Spider-Man had greater balance, as Stan added personality elements and even changed the tone of scenes, by providing dialogue that was contrary to Ditko's intent, such as when Ditko depicted a campus protest, which was critical of the protesters, in his plot, but which Stan dialogued in a more sympathetic manner. This was part of the rift between the two, as Stan was a fairly middle-of-the-road person, politically, while Ditko was far more conservative. On the opposite side, Kirby was far more liberal than Stan and had seen combat in WW2, while Stan was stateside.
Comic book publishing was one of the most exploitive mediums, with creators treated rather poorly. Unfortunately, modern conglomerates are just as shady as the mobsters, dodgy publishers, fraudsters and quick-buck artists who started many of the publishing companies and got rich off the back of the creative personnel. Stan is the rare exception, as he was a cousin to the publisher and was figured-into the business for the rest of his life. Will Eisner and Joe Simon were smart enough to know the real money was in owning their creations and made deals that gave them ownership of their work. Most of the rest ate crow to feed their families, while the publishers bought respectability.
For some reason I think the company that destroyed the notion of public domain is not worried.
I wonder how this would effect the relationship Sony pictures has, them being the owners of the film rights to spiderman
I am a die-hard and avid reader/lover of comics and their history. Welcome to the complex world of creator rights in comic books. I love seeing everybody learning and trying to give input, but so much of this stuff is heavily rooted in the history of the industry. It's all much more complex than any of us could figure out unfortunately, and it's hard to know the right outcome. It's primarily an issue with the really old school generation, because back then (1) there weren't industry standards, and (2) comics weren't that profitable. The creators pumped out issue after issue of material they often probably didn't care about just because it was a job. Comics were bought for your kid on your way home from work, and your kid would throw them away a few days later. So a lot of these creators sold or signed over rights to their characters because they could never have imagined they'd be worth anything. Over time, creators and readers started becoming more invested and caring more and more, but by then two major shifts had happened: (1) the characters had grown beyond the sole creations of the original works, and were now characters that truly did belong to the companies, as they were ingrained as part of the connected universes and had developed significantly since the original issues. (2) the new creators were aware of the previous change and it just became industry standard that when you work on these books, you're adding to the mythos owned by the company. It's different for works that aren't part of the wider universes, like if Marvel/DC is just publishing your standalone, original work and retaining the rights, that's messed up. For example, DC famously has the rights to Watchmen and it's characters, even though at the time it was an entirely standalone, one-off miniseries that Alan Moore wrote. But with these shared universe characters it's hard to say what should be done with them. And then it gets even more complicated when you start bringing in not just the copyright for the characters themselves, but then the publishing and distribution rights, the copyright for all previously published material, etc. Complicated stuff.
Oh man, it looks like the guy who fought and won back the rights to Friday the 13th and Jason Voorhees has inspired other folks to follow suit!
If this happens then it doesn’t mean that MCU goes away, but it means that Disney will have to share a massive amount of their profits with the rights holders. Since Disney is making ridiculous amounts of money off of these characters, they’d be stupid not to pay whatever it is they’re asking for in their contracts.
Good. If Disney's gonna have a monopoly on a majority of the entertainment industry anyway the least they can do is share their income with some of the creators who helped them get there.
That lawsuit finally ended?! That's great news. Friday the 13th laying dormant for so long was a shame, but totally understandable. If there was any business shadier than comic books in the 60s, it was slasher movies in the 80s
>If this happens then it doesn’t mean that MCU goes away, but it means that Disney will have to share a massive amount of their profits with the rights holders.
That is exactly what it means. They'll write out the characters from existing in the Marvel universe, 'forget' that they're in the MCU, and do their best smear campaign on the artists while strong arming the industry to blacklist them.
@@leadpaintchips9461 They don't have to try hard to blacklist the artists. Marvel is one of the big two comic publishers and the bigger media company, thanks to Disney. They can just as easily not hire them and never use the characters, like they did with the X-Men and mutants in general.
@@tuffy135ify IIRC, they wrote them out over the dispute and replaced them with a copyright friendly version of the role mutants played until they were able to get the X-Men back.
Now I'm interested in your thoughts on Ken Pender's lawsuits. He used to work for Archie Comics and claimed copyright to all the characters he created while working for them, Archie filed a lawsuit against him, he filed a lawsuit against SEGA and Archie, then filed a lawsuit against Electronic Arts - it's a story. By the end he owns the copyright for all the characters he created and now gets royalties on reprints of issues with his characters. After the lawsuits, Archie killed off or removed his characters from their comics.
It's interesting to know that proving characters were works for hire wasn't an issue specific to Archie.
Marvel charged its artists retroactively for the art supplies. Even decades later. How does that affect this, if at all? That sounds like Marvel was selling art supplies to its employees. Not even Texaco sold pencils to drafting department employees in its heyday.
I think a big problem is all that not all the creators are inovled. Lee isn't mentioned and he definitly was an employee at the time.
would you be able to cover "poor mans copyright" where you mail yourself a document or item as a means to claim ownership of an item.
That hasn't been a thing in a very, very long time (and even before, it was never really a *big* thing).
In the digital age, it's possible to perfectly mimic a mailed envelope. There are even websites that break down the details in the barcodes (because of course there are) to make it indistinguishable from what it would have been had the letter been actually mailed.
Because of this, a person could take something that already existed (probably created by someone without the funds to really defend themselves), create a bogus letter for it, age it (aging paper is remarkably easy), and then claim that the work was theirs.
It’s trivial these days to register your copyright, why bother?
OMG, I love that you used that Maleficent clip "oh dear, what an awkward situation" - that is exactly what Disney would say in their classic Disney villain voice :)
Viewed from a different angle:
Some amount of legal/copyright classes should be required curriculum for artists so they'll know how to properly protect their interests. Because they're constantly getting screwed over in the short run and long run by much larger entities that profit enormously off of their work.
The "screwing over" is the problem, not the lack of knowledge by the artists. You shouldn't have to become a lawyer (or repeatedly consult a lawyer) to get a job. If ordinary people can't understand the law, the law is wrong.
@@1FatLittleMonkey Agreed.
But the law isn't going to change to favor smaller interests and/or become easier to understand. Thus, it's the people affected negatively by it that need to adapt and learn to cover their assets.
@@davidg5898 Simply giving artists legal training won't help them if the law gives the employer all the power to dictate terms. As seems to be the case here.
@@1FatLittleMonkey This entire video is about the fact that the legal relationship between the artists, their work, and Marvel was never clearly established.
So, yes, a little legal knowledge on the part of the artists *would* have helped here. A document stating whether they were employees or contractors would have made a big difference. If working as a contractor, they would then want other documents stating whether any given art was work for hire, an assignment, a licensed work, or falls into another category -- that would define who is the holder of which copyrights (distribution, reproduction, design, etc.).
Those 2 types of things written down on paper would have totally avoided pretty much all of the legal issues discussed in this video.
Employers do not have all of the power to dictate all terms. If an artists work is specifically desired, that artist has their own power. Part of that power is to say "Your terms are unreasonable and you're unwilling to budge, I'm going to approach XYZ company about my work instead." Selling/licensing/etc. art is always a negotiation.
So fun fact, the "for hire" law actually makes companies own pornography if their artists choose to be spiteful. I know it's happened but I can't remember if it was Disney or another company that Definitely has that in their vault
I'm not sure how i really feel about this. I think the creators and families are entitled to some IP rights, and that Disney can stand to pay out to creators. Granted, it would be nice to see further creations featuring these characters.
Yeah if these family wins then what happens? Are they just going to sit on the rights of the character for the next century without doing anything with them? I don’t like Disney being monopolistic, I want to see the heirs to these legendary creators being fairly compensated, but I don’t want to see characters like Thor, Spider-Man, and Iron Man in copyright limbo till I’m a shriveled old man, corpse, or Brain in a Jar.
@@InquisitorThomas I saw some other legal breakdowns that if the rights went to the families, they would likely then enter agreements with Disney where the characters can keep being used in movies and comics, and that the families/estates would be able to get profits from those works instead purely Marvel/Disney
@@InquisitorThomas "Are they just going to sit on the rights of the character for the next century without doing anything with them?"
I submit that it's literally insane to suggest they would do this. What they will do is license the characters to Marvel so that they will continue to make bank from them.
It would be dumb for people that have done absolutely jack-diddly-squat to contribute to the characters creation to get anything from it.
I might agree that Disney should forfeit something if it was the original creators, but it's just their descendants who realistically shouldn't be entitled to something their parents or grandparents sold decades before they were even born.
@@Elaborance I donno if I’d be so hardline about generational inheritance. On one hand, yeah, I don’t think the children or family of a creator should have creative or economic control of a property. On the other hand, the labor of the artist and their hope to insure the fiscal well being of their family via their work, I think, should be respected. It’s why wills exist, and while inheritance can lead to real entitlement and miserly families, I think that your average worker, artist, creator, etc. isn’t giving their children millions, or billions, but a chance at college or trade school, health insurance and the like. But hey, that’s just me.
Speaking of Jack Kirby, comics fans from the 80s know of his battle to reclaim pages of artwork being withheld by Marvel. Jim Shooter, who was then Marvel's editor-in-chief, was vilified in trade publications and comics news outlets because some believed he had the power to collect all of Kirby's artwork at the Marvel archives and hand it over to Jack. Not quite that simple...
I think the only way the big companies can come out without looking like even bigger jerks is to offer some kind of 50/50 split
I know about the "Work for hire" thing mainly cuz of the Ken Penders/Archie Comics case, which destroyed my favorite childhood comic.
I've followed the Toberoff/Siegel &Shuster heirs case for many years, and all I can say is that the whole situation is ugly. Nobody in that lawsuit comes out looking good. I rarely feel good about a situation where the creative minds who developed a character from scratch don't own their own creations. I don't like it when a company hogs the profits when an IP explodes the way Superman did in the 40s, 50s, and 60s while the creators struggle financially. I don't think it's right for the heirs of the creators to stake a claim in revenues when they also had no part in the creation or distribution of the IP. And, sorry Devin, it doesn't sit well with me when the person who may have the most to gain financially from a successful suit is the plaintiffs' lawyer, as Toberoff had a lot of machinations in place should his clients had won the suit.
Accelerating entry into public domain might be the best bet here.
1:30 - Chapter 1 - Why marvel is suings its creators ?
2:45 - Chapter 2 - What is a termination provision in copyright law ?
5:30 - Chapter 3 - Which works are eligible for termination ?
13:15 - End roll ads
I mean, maybe it's cuz I'm not a lawyer, but this case seems pretty heavily stacked in Marvel's favor, based on precedent. I don't see how anyone could view these works as anything but for-hire.
Unfortunately I think you're right
Yeah. If Jack Kirby who had a far more loose relationship was ruled to be work for hire, there's no real logical way to argue that the others are anything else.
@@jonasturklbach2705 Why unfortunately? these guys could have been completely independant and just published their creations through Marvel, but that would have meant greater risk to them, so they chose to work for a company which would then have ownership over their creations. That's how the world works, that's both the advantage and disadvantage of working for a company: better stability of pay and conditions, loss of ownership for work. I'm not a fan of modern Disney in the slightest, but I think what they are arguing is completely reasonable in this case.
@@Musikur its not really fair, just because the world has worked that way doesnt mean it should.
How could the Supreme Court have viewed that sculpture as anything but a work for hire? That seems even clearer than the Marvel cases, yet they somehow ruled the opposite (wrong) way.
As a Foreign Rights Manager at a publishing house I *LOVE* your videos on copyright! ❤️
This video is very informative and helps me be informed on this case! Thanks LegalEagle :D
To this day, there is pay that never was given to Ditko for his work on Spiderman. Plus Ditko based his idea on a concept originally conceived as the Silver Spider.
As an author, my family holds the rights to the books I write for at least 70 years after my passing. I'm a self-published author so I don't have to worry about rights (I don't have a comic, movie, or show of my book though so it's not quite the same circumstance).
Gosh people are ruthless! I know that may sound strange but the arguing over definitions of words and pieces of writings is so crazy to think about. Especially pieces written half a decade or longer ago.
you gotta see it for what it truly is.
this is not about who actually owns these characters.
they are arguing over who is in title to the money these ideas generate and disney is fighting doubly hard because losing this means they lost the major reason they bothered ot buy Marvel.
Just my opinion: the second camera setup is nice in itself, but it just looks weird to me. I'm not sure if it's because it's not head on enough or if it's just too little to the side -- Devin feels to look just past me as if he deliberately wants to avoid eye contact. It might also be because the camera is closer to him, blowing his features up somewhat.
When he is facing the camera, it feels like he is talking to me. When the second camera angle is used, I wonder whom he is talking to.
One of the good things about the German copyright law is that it it forbids copyright transfer. Whoever creates something obtains the copyright of it and this copyright cannot be sold or otherwise transferred, the creator will always keep the copyright. The only valid transfer is inheritance if the creator dies, in which case the right can be passed on spouse, children, etc. You can only transfer usage rights, e.g. the right to duplicate content, the right to sell content, the right to make money by licensing, etc. And typically if you are a hired creator, your contract will grant some of those rights to your employer, yet the copyright itself always stays with you, even if you were hired as it is legally impossible to transfer it.
Termination of a contract has to be spoken in the same tone of voice as
"I'll be back!"
😁
I knew of the Kirby lawsuit back in the 1980s, but didn't know there was another one in 2013.
Maybe Devin can make a short explaining how they were different, or what new issues came up?
You might want to look at Jim Shooter's blog.
It hasn't been updated in some years, but he commented on copyrights, royalties, etc. for Marvel when he was EIC in the 80s. As someone who had to deal with both the creatives and the corporates (and pushed hard for improvements in the royalty system), he had interesting comments about what happened behind the scenes.
Objection: while promoting Ting, you implied that you had a contractual obligation not to reveal who your previous provider had been, and then dropped some hints that made it pretty clear. Presumably, as a lawyer, you wouldn't have done that unless you thought it was legal, which leads me to some questions.
How was the rule written, such that it allows you to drop those hints? Presumably your provider would not happy with you dropping them. Is it possible to rewrite the contract to prohibit those hints? If not, why not? If so, what would the revised wording look like?
The agreement probably says that he can’t explicitly name his previous cell provider. If that’s the clause then there’s no harm in hinting at who it could have been as long as he doesn’t say it outright or use their intellectual property while promoting Ting Mobile.
That end ad transition was SEAMLESS!! Good job.
Legal Eagle smash! No seriously, this looks fun.
A lawsuit like this was decided not long ago between Victor Miller and Sean Cunningham over the rights to the Friday the 13th franchise. Sean argued Victor's work was for-hire but Victor ended up winning the lawsuit.
I am curious how this lawsuit has been influenced by Todd McFarlane's "creative control" dispute and exit from Marvel in the 1990s. He went on to co-create Image Comics where artists maintain control over their creations.
And then he tried to f Alan Moore. 🤣
Not at all, I'm assuming. This is about the creator or their estate recovering profitable copyrights. Image was about creators maintaining their rights in the first place, which I understand was kind of a failed experiment.
The one thing I would like to know is how the extension of copyright wasn't viewed as a violation of the ex post defato clause in the US constitution. (Article I, Section 9, Clause 3)
That work for hire BS is what caused Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld and others to start Image Comics where whoever created a character retains the copyright.
TIL
And then Todd did that to Neil Gaiman! But Todd paid him like $100,000 an issue and Gaiman *still* sued for ownership of the character Angela lol. (Then sold her to Marvel, I think.)
@@FordFourD-aka-Ford4D yep thats where he sold her. I think she's a long lost sister of Thor or some shit but I waiting for someone to point out how McFarlane turned around and tried the same shit he was running from. The money got to his head.
@@rogueprince1341 I mean, Spawn was *his baby* !! When you got something you started by yourself that you're willing to bet it all on, (and even pay a writer $100k an issue…) you'll understand lol.
@@FordFourD-aka-Ford4D AFAIK, McFarlane and Gaiman agreed on a certain payment, but McFarlane didn't pay. In such a case, suing seems reasonable to me.
These characters were a work for hire, created in the "Merry Marvel Way," case friggin' closed. There's a reason why some of the greatest comics artists back in the 90's started working for Image Comics. Image Comics was started by Todd McFarlane with the SPECIFIC INTENT of getting around that pesky "work for hire" problem. If any lawyer needs to defend Marvel and DC against the work for hire stuff, all they need to do is point to Image. Its entire reason for being was to pull the best artists in the business away from the work-for-hire arrangement they had with the establishment comic publishers and allow those creators to retain control of their work. It was no big secret. If you worked on stuff for Marvel/DC, you were working on THEIR stuff, not your own stuff.
"VERIZON" only half cropped. Is that a contact violation?
Hey. I have a travel law question, if someome can help me.
I recently watch a "hack" on tiktok that said that when you want to travel to a place and the direct flight is expensive because of demand you can just find a cheaper flight to another place that has a stop in the place you want to go in the first place and just leave the airport "mid travel" so you can save some money.
Even more, they say you can check your bags in the airport for the direct flight, yet not pay for the travel itself or maybe ask for a partial refund or something of the sort (don't know how they would do that) and then take the cheaper flight with the stop and when you get to your airport destination take the luggage that was sent from the direct flight.
But, here is the problem. People in the comments say that that is illegal and you can get sued over this. I understand the thing about letting your lugagge or bags alone in an airport is a big NO but what about the first part. Is that really ilegal or sueable?
*Sorry for my english
The mention of Ayn Rand based characters certainly dropped my esteem of Steve Ditko.
Stories like this make me want to scream. Companies get away with so much by playing the “independent contractor,” card. They take away health insurance, job security, and intellectual property from their workers by labelling them independent contractors or sometimes they call them consultants. It means the same thing, and they tell the workers, your take home pay is higher as a result.
I love how relentless he is about that Verizon bill🤣
Howard the Duck has actually already been in the MCU. He's at the club where Yondu meets the Sovereign High Priestess in Guardians 2.
I actually hope Marvel loses these characters and by extension Disney, That company has too much IPs imo. Also Ironic for Disney's own draconic copyright laws changes to fk them over!
For those interested in the Howard the Duck character, look up the Howard the Duck Switcharoo. It's a clever way how the creators Steve Gerber and Val Mayerik technically took back their character.
6:30 Sounds like the argument on whether peter parker owns the spiderman photos he sells to jameson...
Parker would own most of the pictures because he sells the pictures as a freelancer rather than being a salaried employee of the Daily Bugle however the Bugle has in it's contracts that they own the copyright to the photos and have licence to put them in a published book with no permission
It’s funny because for all intents and purposes JJJ is Stan Lee and Peter is Steve Ditko
I was curious if, when things go out of copyright, the setting of the story is considered an "element" of the story. This is to say, if old Captain America stories fell out of copyright due to timing, and someone else was going to do a Captain America story (can't call it that on the front, though, trademark, amirite?), can the still set it in modern day? Or would the story itself (for copyright reasons, not creative ones) still have to be set in the 1940's?
The irony of Stan Lee's family trying to get the rights to any characters after Lee spent decades screwing people out of credit should not be lost. Jack Kirby is laughing from beyond the grave
Jack Kirby’s estate also sued Disney for money.
Stan Lee, whatever his faults, did contribute to Marvel surviving as a company and I’d rather see Spider-Man profiting his estate rather than Disney. Likewise the Fantastic Four should definitely be owned by Kirby’s estate and Doctor Strange should go to Ditko’s estate
What a great segue into your ad. Flawless!
Imo he should of cosplayed as Dare Devil instead of the Hulk.
This comment deserves more likes.
@@Andrew.Grabowski Maybe it would *have* if Marcus paid attention in English instead of reading comic books.
Your video on the Houston comic shop Third Planet makes me hope more cases are illustrated. This seems to be where the talent to do that is.
DIsney Legal Team: "Reality can be whatever I want..."
Capitalism separating workers from the fruits of their labor once again, shock level zero 🤢🤮🤢
@@xp7575 how do things work out for artists under communism?
@@BeeHatGuy Just fine, a major part of communism is sharing with the people who need it. A fisher can't live on only fish, a farmer can't live on only carrots, and its the same with art. We are at a point in history where we can more than provide for the material needs of everybody, so in a system where a person's financial security isn't dependant on their market value, it doesn't matter if they're an artist, a doctor, or even unemployed, they get what they need all the same.
Lawyer: you sure about that?
Where did you get this information from? We are going to have about 10 billion people on this planet in less than 10 years why would we even have close to enough food for everyone?
The problem is that copyright lasts too long, so whatever specific arrangements happened between the artists and the company is ancient history.
I hate to say it, because Disney sucks as a company, but if they lose the right to some of these names the people who would lose the most would be us as fans, and whoever ended up with the rights to these movies.
With the exception of the original Spider-Man trilogy, I think history has shown up plenty of times what other companies do with these properties, and how their movies usually go.
How much money did the James Garfield Spider-Man movies make again?
I forget, how did the previous Hulk movies do?
Remind me again how popular the last Fan4stic movie was?
I think I've made my point.
The sad part of all of this is that under the copyright law that existed when a lot of these works were made, most of them would be in the public domain right now. Anyone could make Batman or Superman movie, not just Disney or Sony or whoever currently owns it. It would be free for everyone and none of this would be an issue. However this lawsuit goes, the public are the losers.
Doesn't that assume that the public are better off with a ton of knock off productions? One could argue that it couldn't get much worse for the DC franchise characters but Marvel has had its act together and a bunch knock off works could seriously mess up the concept of the MCU
@@nctpti2073 Disney's whole empire was built on the public domain. It wouldn't stop Disney or Marvel from doing what they do, but you could also get people doing much more creative things and using the material in ways that Disney overlords would never allow. But the main point is, it's part of our culture, and that culture is owned by Disney, when it should belong to everyone.
@@jupiterkansas It was, but with characters that had been public domain for a couple hundred years. And at a time when it was a lot more expensive to mass produce media using them.
To say that Marvel characters are 'part of our culture' and therefore should be ours is, to me, like saying that any and every other asset in reality should be the same. No land ownership anymore since the land has been there for far longer than 95 years? Might sound good to some but then... how do you decide who gets to live on that land or otherwise use it? It gets non-functional really quick.
And similar goes for fictional characters, arguably even moreso since they are far more mutable than land. You can end up with a situation where these 'cultural icons' are no longer in any way recognizable as such.
@@nctpti2073 It's more like Disney's lease on Yellowstone is up, and now were going to make it a National Park. The public would own and control the land, which is different than "no land ownership." But you can't really compare intellectual property to actual property because actual property is a finite commodity, and intellectual property is just an expression of an idea. You can't really own an idea forever. That's why copyright has a specific term limit. The only reason copyright exists is to encourage creation. It's not supposed to last forever, and since current terms are longer than most people live, it's essentially forever.
The length of time that has passed shouldn't make a difference, nor the cost or difficulty to produce art. Those are arbitrary measures. When they created Superman in the 1930s, they knew the copyright would only last until, at most, the 1980s, and after that it would be public domain. It didn't prevent them from creating or building a business around Superman, and Superman should have been public domain for the last 30-40 years.
If that had happened, Superman would still be Superman just like Hamlet is still Hamlet, and Warner Brothers could still make their movies. They just wouldn't have exclusive rights, and maybe other filmmakers or artists or storytellers might have come up with even more interesting takes on the character (are the Warners movies really true to the spirit of 1930s Superman anyway? No, but they're the only ones that get to say what modern Superman is like.) But the damage was done way back in 1976, and we have to live with it. At least things from the 1920s are finally starting to enter the public domain again. Superman (the first comics, anyway) will be public domain in about 15 years.
@@jupiterkansas Let's take your Yellowstone analogy. Say instead of becoming a national park, Yellowstone literally became 'free land' that anyone could use freely as they wished.
Do you really think it would still be as amazing as it is?
And do you really think that when any of these characters were created, anyone was thinking about copyright considerations 95 years down the line? Really really unlikely.....
I feel like Marvel should still be able to use the characters, but the creators' heirs should definitely get a share of the profits...
No, have you seen what Ken Penders did to Sonic Archery Comics? He stole half the cast of the comic form the comic. You want Marvel and Disney to win. Or the characters are just gone forever.
Objction- when Edward R.Murrow became a CBS correspondent during World War II he was hired by the network but his delivery on the air, choice of timbre, was not chosen by the network. Stan Lee’s take on Spiderman such as the character’s attitude towards his adversaries and his New York attitude reflected Lee’s choices which were approved by Marvel’s fans.
Lieber is pronounced LEE-ber. Larry Lieber is Stan Lee's younger brother. Stan just shortened the name, back when it was, shall we say, expedient for people with ethnic names to change them to something more "American" sounding, to avoid prejudice.
Isn't Lee a chinese surname?
@@bored_person You mean like that famous Chinese colonel, Robert E Lee?
@@jdotoz good point. I guess it's one of those names that originated in multiple cultures.
2:08 That edit to the Sleeping Beauty clip...*mwah!* Just brilliant.
Isn't it weird that (most of) these creators, who are now deceased, hardly ever tried to sue Marvel during their lifetime, but now their children are doing so? I guess they didn't think their inheritance was big enough.
They just don't think Disney should get it. Someone is making money.
They're the only people who could sue them to be fair. Disney's been eating up IP's for almost 100 years now and show's no signs of ever letting any of them go public domain.
not really, many of them watched the previous cases where those with more resources lost. Just because it's ways been that way doesn't mean it's right. Why was Disney pushing so hard for public domain when it benefited them decades ago? Many of their famous animations were based on other peoples work and they wanted the freedom to use it. If the original creators are deceased then make it public domain so everyone has access to it
@@CorwynGC Disney is the only reason these characters are worth shit anymore without the mcu Marvel and DC were both dead
@@ziegfeld4131 Even if true, doesn't give Disney the right to steal them.
Well Howard the Duck got quite a few appearances in the recent What If? Series so I could see him getting a new film. Or at least a big part in an upcoming film.
Smoothest segue into a sponsorship I've ever seen.
Just wait till the next one.
I would love to see a video on independent contractor. Maybe a good topic could be the Obama Hope poster? Great channel. My reading comprehension is not very good, your videos are very in depth and allow me to go full lawyer on my attorney wife. I lose most of the time, but i have a fighting chance now.
What was Stan Lee's employment contract? Did he and the others, agree as terms of employment that their works for hire were not theirs and that of their employers? If not, then someone needs to produce a licensing agreement originating near the time of creations of the works.
They do not need to agree in their employment to contract that they will not own their works if they are hired to make comic books then the comic books belong to their boss including the characters in it.
@@cablefeed3738 You forgot to add IANAL, because clearly YANAL.
I remember watching some other video about this very same topic and they had something in their paychecks that was like ''me cashing in this check means it was work for hire'' something like that anyway.
Well, it's not always clear. If you're an author and you agree to produce a certain number of titles under contract, you are still the named author and have ownership of the work. But if you're a staff writer for contributing pieces for publication with other writers, maybe not.
ALWAYS set the terms of the relationship in writing at the start of the engagement.
@@lohphat Yes, setting the terms of the relationship is good advice, but it doesn't change the fact here that (at least as far as I'm aware), Stan Lee and co, produced those characters while being paid to produce comics for Marvel, which would seem to me to mean that they would have to prove that Marvel _didn't_ have ownership over those characters rather than the other way around.
Sort of a weird question, but before you went into your advertising sections you talked about being reimbursed for supplies. Is that a part of being considered an employee? If the artist used their own equipment, in this case pen and ink, does that factor into this litigation?
Would love to see you talk about the contract that Marvel has with Universal theme parks cause that’s some interesting stuff right there.
Also Simpsons theme park