3 Count: Lawsuit of Steel

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1: Warner Bros Hit With Superman Copyright Lawsuit Ahead of New Movie

First off, today, Blake Brittain at Reuters reports that the estate of one of Superman’s co-creators has filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. Discovery over an upcoming Superman film.

Joeseph Shuster was the illustrator who co created the original character alongside Jerome Siegel. Now, Shuster’s iestate is accusing Warner of copyright infringement saying that, under UK law, Shuster’s rights to the character reverted to the estate in 2017, 25 years after his death.

The lawsuit further alleges that Warner has failed to pay royalties for uses of the character outside the United States. A new Superman film, directed by James Gunn, is expected to be released in July.

2: Twinless and Selena y Los Dinos Pulled from Sundance Online Screenings

Next up today, Alejandra Gularte at Vulture reports that the Sundance Film Festival has removed two award-winning videos from digital, at-home screenings due to piracy issues.

The films are Twinless and Selena. Twinless won the audience award and Selena won the US Documentary Special Jury Award for Archival Storytellilng. Both films saw spikes in piracy following their awards, likely owed to the at-home screenings.

Neither film has a distributor and will remain offline (at least officially) until they are bought.

3: Court Rejects Musi’s Bid to Force Apple to Reinstate its Music App

Finally today, Ernesto Van der Sar at Torrentfreak writes that a judge has denied an injunction that would have required Apple to restore the Musi app to their App Store.

Musi is a free music streaming service that uses YouTube stream music to users. However, both rightsholders and YouTube say that this approach is a violation of copyright, resulting in the app’s removal from both the Google and Apple stores.

Musi sued Apple, seeking to have the app restored. However, the court has denied an injunction, saying that it is not in the public interest to grant it. The judge did not weigh in on the validity of the allegations against Musi.

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