Legal Research

Truth, Justice, and the American Way

By David Cheifetz

and, in the IP world,  maybe soon coming to Canada.  But this message isn’t about the upcoming Canadian version of the US DMCA.

Instead, it’s about American ingenuity, the “if at first you  don’t succeed motto” and  Warner Bros. ongoing attempts to control as much as it can of the profit-making capacity of the Superman character.  Read about it here. The caption of the article is “Warner Bros. So Distraught Over Losing Superman Rights, It Personally Sues The Lawyer Who Won”, subtitled “from the getting-a-bit-personal dept”. The background is that  WB was recently forced to return some of rights to the estate(s) of the Stupe’s creators.  It’s now suing the lawyer who acted for the estates.  The site (Techdirt) provides a link to a pdf copy of the complaint.

Techdirt’s opening gets right to the heart of the matter.

Apparently, Warner Bros. (a frequent target of Toberoff) has had enough and has decided to sue Toberoff personally, claiming that… well… basically that he’s a jerk and a savvy business person, which I didn’t quite realize was illegal. Specifically, they seem to be claiming that Toberoff “manipulated” the creators of Superman, having them hand over a large percentage of the rights to the character if he was able to successfully manage the termination.

It’s just a bit incongruous that the surname of the first of the lawyers listed as representing WB is Petrocelli.

h/t Techdirt

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on May 25, 2010 (boomark / email).