Copyright and Comic Book Superheroes

Janet Fries, of counsel to the Washington, D.C., office, wrote an article for the March/April 2014 issue of Landslide, a publication of the ABA Section of Intellectual Property Law.

The article explores several current IP topics through the lens of superheroes and comic books.  Janet discusses cases involving Batman, Spider-Man, Superman and other superheroes to explain the scope of copyright protection, including the categories of copyrightable subject matter, and some of the hurdles that must be overcome in order to exercise statutory rights to terminate transfers of copyrights.