Bam! Pow! Smash! The demise of a comic book artist’s copyright

Description

Abstract: The heirs of an artist who had created several comic book heroes served various entities of the publisher with notices purporting to exercise statutory termination rights under the Copyright Act. The publisher claimed that the heirs had no termination rights because all of the drawings were “made for hire” for the company. The question was whether this was true, since it would entitle the employer to be the author for purposes of copyright ownership. This article looks at the appeals court’s application of the “instance and expense test” to make this determination. Marvel Characters, Inc. v. Kirby, No. 11-3333-cv, Aug. 8, 2013 (2nd Cir.)