Kirby Family & Marvel Settle Dispute Over Copyright
Just days before the U.S. Supreme Court was set to hear the case of “Kirby vs. Marvel” over the rights to Jack Kirby’s work, the litigants have issued a statement saying they’ve settled.
“Marvel and the family of Jack Kirby have amicably resolved their legal disputes, and are looking forward to advancing their shared goal of honoring Mr. Kirby’s significant role in Marvel’s history.”
During his days at Marvel, Kirby was responsible for creating or co-creating some of the biggest characters for the publisher, including the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. Using a clause in the 1976 Copyright Act, the family was fighting to terminate grants of copyright to the characters. Marvel’s contention has been that they owned the characters because Kirby’s work was “for hire” — which is the same arrangement argued in the case of Stan Lee Media’s claim to Spider-Man.
Lisa Kirby, Neal Kirby, Susan Kirby, and Barbara Kirby petitioned SCOTUS on March 21st for a hearing on the case, hoping the court would rule in their favor and grant that they had the right to terminate rights in 2009. The family had sent out 45 notices of termination regarding 262 works. Those notices went to Marvel, Disney, Sony, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, and others. After the lack of an agreement between parties, Marvel then sued in 2010 to re-assert their ownership. The Supreme Court had agreed to take the case into a September 29th conference in order to consider whether they would hear arguments or not.
Backed by an amicus brief from SAG-AFTRA, the Writers Guild, and the Directors Guild, the Kirby family had strong support going into the hearing.
The easy assumption is that Disney and Marvel settled because they didn’t want to lose the characters, but a strong argument can be made for the “work for hire” arrangement, especially since the early days of comics weren’t full of contracts and legal wranglings as they are nowadays. The Supreme Court ruling could have just as easily gone one way as the other.
But what if the publishers are starting to fix these “broken” arrangements? In the case of DC Comics and Bill Finger, Jim Lee is on record saying he’d love to give Finger credit on Batman, but that his hands are tied legally because of the deal DC has with Bob Kane’s estate. In the same sense, as we’ve noted on Level Eleventy-Seven, Kirby’s name is on the opening credits for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. every episode, so there’s at least an acknowledgement that he’s contributed to the Marvel lore.
And speculation: since Kirby helped create the Black Panther, could the litigation have been one of the reasons a Black Panther movie hasn’t happened yet? Could a settlement be one more factor in finally moving forward with a story in Wakanda?
From the outside looking in, it’s always easy to jump to conclusions. Marvel caved. Kirby’s heirs settled because they didn’t have a case. Etc. Unless more details are officially released, speculation is likely all we’ll have. But for some people, at least this might be a little closure.
