{"id":1695,"date":"2011-06-13T21:22:43","date_gmt":"2011-06-14T02:22:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/goldenagecomics.org\/wordpress\/?p=1695"},"modified":"2011-06-13T21:22:43","modified_gmt":"2011-06-14T02:22:43","slug":"litigation-golden-age-style-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/goldenagecomics.org\/wordpress\/2011\/06\/13\/litigation-golden-age-style-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Litigation, Golden Age Style – Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Except for us lawyers, most people find reading cases tedious at best.\u00a0 There’s no doubt that a fifty page opinion about copyright and contract \u00a0law would cure the most severe case of insomnia.\u00a0 Nevertheless, those of us in the profession enjoy a well reasoned opinion, especially when it touches upon some issue that is near and dear to our hearts.\u00a0 Of course, I learned a long time ago to avoid mixing what I do for a living with my hobby.\u00a0 Reading and enjoying Golden Age comic books is a welcomed\u00a0refuge to the stresses of my “day job”.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But for whatever reason,\u00a0my curiosity got the best of me the other day and I started looking at some of the old cases where DC decided to use the litigation process to protect its biggest asset, Superman.<\/p>\n

\"Action<\/a>

Action Comics #7 (1938)<\/p><\/div>\n

DC didn’t waste any time in the Golden Age and went after Bruns Publications and others in the 1939 case of Detective Comics, Inc. v. Bruns Publications<\/em>.\u00a0 In this suit, DC sought an injunction to stop Bruns from publishing its Wonder Man feature in the pages of Wonder Comics <\/em>#1 (May 1939) as drawn by the great Will Eisner.\u00a0 DC’s suit was successful, and Judge Woosley of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York issued an order on April 7, 1939 finding that Wonder Man was indeed a violation of DC’s copyright of the Superman stories\u00a0in Action Comics 1-8.\u00a0 As stated by the Court, “I have gone through all the plaintiff’s magazines and the defendant’s magazine, and I find that in the one copy of the defendant’s magazine which has come out,- the May, 1939, number of the magazine called \u2018Wonder Comics\u2018 – there has been unfair use by the defendant of the plaintiff’s copyrighted pictures and unfair paraphrase of the plaintiff’s text accompanying its pictures.”\u00a0 This opinion was affirmed in 1940 by the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Wonder Man was no more.<\/p>\n

\"Wonder<\/a>

Wonder Comics #1 (1939)<\/p><\/div>\n

Later, in the much publicized case of National Publications, Inc. v. Fawcett Publications<\/em>, Superman and Captain Marvel waged war over whether Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family were being published in violation of DC’s Superman copyright.\u00a0 This litigation which was initiated in 1945 went on for many years.\u00a0 Initially, DC lost the battle in the District Court for the Southern District of New York.\u00a0 In fact, in that opinion dated April 10, 1950, District Judge Coxe, while finding that Fawcett had indeed violated DC’s copyright of Superman, ruled against DC by finding that DC had abandoned it’s copyright of Superman <\/em>by publishing the adventures of its greatest asset in the newspaper\u00a0between 1939 and 1944\u00a0without proper copyright notices.\u00a0\u00a0 Wow!\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But all was not lost.\u00a0 The great jurist, Learned Hand of the United States\u00a0Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in an opinion dated August 30, 1951, reversed the abandonment finding of Judge Coxe, but affirmed the finding of\u00a0 Fawcett’s copyright violation.\u00a0 In this landmark copyright case, Judge Hand held that, “We are unwilling to allow a barefaced infringer to invoke an innocent deviation from the letter that could not in the slightest degree have prejudiced him or the public.”\u00a0 So, Superman may have lost a battle along the way, but he ultimately won the war.\u00a0 This decision led to a 1954 settlement of the case whereby Fawcett paid DC $400,000 and agreed to never again publish its Captain Marvel related titles.<\/p>\n

\"Whiz<\/a>

Whiz Comics #2 (1940) - First Appearance of Captain Marvel<\/p><\/div>\n

While these were important cases, none were more serious and far reaching than the series of \u00a0litigation between DC and Superman’s creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster that began in 1948.<\/p>\n

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Coming\u00a0up next: Litigation, Golden Age Style – Part 2<\/p>\n

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