Legal News

Judge Feess Hands Fox Copyright Ownership in ?Watchmen?

By Dan Slater

As the characters in the Watchmen worry over impending nuclear war, the graphic comic has sparked a much smaller skirmish in Hollywood over who owned the rights.

20th Century Fox scored a big copyright win in California federal court on Wednesday when U.S. District Judge Gary A. Feess, in a five-page order, granted Fox’s claim of copyright ownership in Watchmen, a forthcoming flick from Warner Bros. (Pictured, right, is Silk Spectre II, played in the film by Malin Akerman.)

The ruling in favor of Fox, reports the WSJ comes as a surprise, given that the studio appeared to have dropped the project more than a decade ago and was not involved in producing the film. Fox bought the rights to “Watchmen” in the 1980s for one of its top producers, Lawrence Gordon, who helped produce the “Die Hard” franchise. But the studio eventually abandoned its plans to make a film from the graphic novel. Gordon then took the project to Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures.

“Fox owns a copyright interest consisting of, at the very least, the right to distribute the Watchmen motion picture,” Judge Feess wrote. What form Fox’s rights will take remains to be seen, but Judge Feess said he’ll issue a more detailed order soon. He advised the studios to focus on reaching a settlement or appealing the decision.

(Disclosure: Fox is a unit of News Corp., which also owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal.)

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on December 26, 2008 (boomark / email).