The night after Lee Mendelson Film Productions had sued a variety of companies for using Peanut’s songs without permission, Stephen Colbert talked about the news story while the house band played a “Linus and Lucy” behind him. Colbert then joked, “Oh no, I hope this doesn’t cost CBS any money!” It did. Billboard reports that […]
In what would normally be great news for Archie Comics—a Hollywood deal to bring the Archie to the silver screen—has opened up a legal can of worms for co-CEO Jonathan Goldwater. Raven Capital Management claims that Goldwater defaulted on a loan in 2024 giving them control of the intellectual property and the deal with Universal […]
This week’s rabbit hole technically started last week. Whilst scrolling on Bluesky, I noted Mark Kaufman had reposted a video animation of Nancy dancing to a song on a record player. Since I follow current Nancy cartoonist Caroline Cash and the Nancy Comics by Ernie Bushmiller Bluesky accounts seeing Nancy on my feed is not […]
The Man of Steel – or more specifically the heirs of Superman creator Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster – needs a few more allies as they prepare their case for the Supreme Court. You, as a professional artist, can add your name to an amicus brief (friend of the court) supporting the position of creator […]
MAD Magazine cartoonist Tom Richmond takes on the following question in a “I’m not a laywer, but a cartoonist” fashion: I know from reading your blog that a caricaturist can use caricatures of celebrities to display their work, but cannot sell them due to the celebrity “owning” their likeness, and that it is not worth […]
From Robot 6: A federal judge confirmed Wednesday that the heirs of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel relinquished any claims to the character in a 2001 agreement with DC Comics. However, that seems unlikely to end the nearly decade-long legal battle over the Man of Steel. The order by U.S. District Judge Otis Wright III follows […]
The final tally of Matthew Inman’s fundraiser for National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society is $220,024 – 11 times more than the $20,000 he hoped to raise in response to a legal defamation threat by FunnyJunk.com. Over 14,000 individuals donated money to the campaign. On the legal front, after being sued by Charles […]
From the GoComics blog:The title of the blog post is “I JUST FEEL BAD THAT OUR LAWYERS ARE GOING TO MAKE HIM TAKE IT DOWN.” Not sure how serious Universal/Watterson would be about a take down order, but my interpretation of copyright tells me this would fall under fair use.UPDATE: Now that I think about […]
Last week the Southern District Court of New York ruled against heirs of Jack Kirby in their suit to reclaim copyright for many of Marvel’s best known characters. The Comics Journal has a great piece on the differences between this case and the Jerry Siegel/Joe Shuster cases against DC Comics:Some legal observers were expecting Marvel […]
Former San Diego Union-Tribune editorial cartoonist Steve Kelley’s lawsuit against his former paper is heading back to court after an appellate court reinstated it after it was thrown out in 2009. At issue is whether the newspaper threatened Steve Breen with his job if he continued to collaborate with Kelley on the comic strip Dustin […]
I knew there was an organization that collected and distributed orphaned royalties, but wasn’t aware of the legal tussle between the Graphic Artists Guild (GAG) against the Illustrators’ Partnership of America (IPA) – both trying to control the $1.5 million of royalties. A New York Supreme Court has dismissed the case brought by GAG against […]
Yesterday I wrote that attorney’s representing Funky Winkerbean creator Tom Batiuk sent a cease and desist letter to WordPress.com asking for them to remove two blogs that allegedly infringed on Tom’s intellectual property. WordPress.com shutdown the blogs and the blog author has since moved his blog to a private server and removed the Funky Winkerbean […]
Another individual has filed a suit against DreamWorks Animation alleging the studio stole their ideas for the feature film Kung Fu Panda. The new suit is by Jayme Gordon who claims he pitched the idea for a film with similar characters back when DWA CEO Jefferey Katzenberg was with Walt Disney Studios.In the suit, Gordon […]
WordPress.com received a cease and desist letter from attorney’s representing Funky Winkerbean and Crank Shaft creator Tom Batiuk demanding they remove two blogs: sonofstuckfunky.wordpress.com and stuckfunky.wordpress.com for violations of “unauthorized use of the Funky Winkerbean name, trademark, or comic strips.” The site was a daily commentary blog – similar to Comics Curmudgeon – that focused […]