3 Count: Super Settlement

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1: Marvel, Jack Kirby Heirs Settle Dispute Over Superhero Rights

First off today, Ted Johnson at Variety reports that the estate of comic book legend Jack Kirby has settled their dispute with Marvel Entertainment over the rights to many of the company’s most popular characters, including Spider-Man and X-Men.

The estate had sought to terminate the agreements Kirby had made with Marvel when creating the characters. Under copyright law, creators, after a certain number of years, can terminate the licenses they granted others to use their work, dubbed copyright termination. However, Marvel had argued that Kirby was an employee at the company, meaning copyright termination would not apply. In 2011, a court sided with Marvel but the Kirby estate had recently appealed to the Supreme Court.

It is unknown what the terms of the settlement are but the estate and Marvel released a joint statement saying that they have “amicably resolved their legal disputes” and are looking forward to working together.

2: Lionsgate Hopes Server Logs Will Expose Expendables Leaker

Next up today, Ernesto at Torrentfreak writes that Lionsgate Films is working with the owners of the cyberlocker service Swankshare to look at the now-defunct site’s logs and gather potentially useful information about who allegedly leaked the film.

Lionsgate sued Swankshare, along with five other file hosting services, after a copy of the then-upcoming film “The Expendables 3” was leaked online three weeks before release. The owner of Swanksahre, Lucas Lim, has been found and has agreed to allow Lionsgate to view the logs.

The agreement comes after a request by Lionsgate to view the logs as part of its ongoing legal case against Swankshare.

3: Google Hits Back at News Corp’s Claims that it is a Platform for Piracy

Finally today, Mark Sweney at The Guardian reports that Google has published an open letter challenging another open letter published by News Corp that claims Google is an enabler of piracy.

News Corp had recently published the letter, written by chief executive Robert Thomson, which claimed that Google is a “platform for piracy and the spread of malicious networks.”

Google, in its letter, hit back saying that it does more than almost any other company to fight piracy noting that it has removed over 220 million pages from its index on copyright grounds and that it demotes sites than have repeated copyright issues. Google went on to say that it is not the gatekeeper of the web.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

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