Marvel wins fight against Kirby estate

Edit: This is far too deep a case to go back and forth over basic implications of work for hire, creative work, and freelance vs. in-house contracts.

Instead, for catch-up reading here's Kirby's official bio and an New York Times op-ed on the importance of the Kirby case.

I'm in a situation like this and its why I'm slightly informed. Note slightly. I'm not an expert or authority.

Just a couple of things:

1: If you use company time or resources then the company is entitled to a share or the whole thing depending on how good their lawyers are. Company reasources can include any training you might have recieved while working for the company or any potential training you could have recieved if you have open access to the learning materials.

2: If you sign a contract stating that any inventions you create during your period of employment and for a specific amount of time afterwards are the company's. This can vary based on the language of the agreement and can be absolute or vague. For example if you worked for a communications company and invented a better dog house or catbox they would have no say as long as you didnt use company reasources or time and you didnt sign a contract cover any and all inventions. For example I am still under one of these contracts even though I am not employed by that company anymore for the next 4 years. The language is general enough to cover all electronic devices I might invent so until 2015 I can't really work on any of the inventions I've got tumbling around in my noggin. And the company's lawyers make the IRS look as weak as BP accident prevention plans so I don't even put stuff on paper for fear that they would find it and make a claim that they own it since it was being worked on during the period that the contract was in effect. So when ever a eureka moment hits me I file it away in my memories to be recalled later.

There are a lot of assumptions being made in these comments, and many of them are wrong. I'm not sure if any of these corrections will change someone's opinion, but for the record:

1. "Kirby pitched ideas but never worked on anything unless Marvel gave him the green light."

Absolutely not true. Kirby brought several things to Marvel he had already created, and Marvel passed on them. Some characters currently at Dc might have ended up at Marvel early on if marvel had given the green light.

2. "Now here's the kicker, all these comic book creations were created by people under the exact same condition. They had a contract. They weren't forced to sign it."

Again, not true. The artists were paid by check, and the "contract" was on the back of the check, so they had to sign the check to cash it, and the comic companies said that the signing of the check also meant they agreed to the conditions they wrote on the back of the checks. I don't think any other industry got away with this, and the companies stopped doing it later, but there's definitely some room for legal discussion on the propriety of that, and if you can hold the artist to the "legal contract" he "signed freely."

3. "If you use company time or resources then the company is entitled to a share or the whole thing depending on how good their lawyers are. Company reasources can include any training you might have recieved while working for the company or any potential training you could have recieved if you have open access to the learning materials."

Except on Jack Kirby's case, he didn't work at Marvel. He worked at home, in his basement. He never got any kind of "training" associated with his job. I'm not sure on this point, but I have heard that he paid for all his own art supplies too, which means he worked at home, created stuff on his own dime, and came in to Marvel to submit it. That's a large part of the reason this was not a clear-cut case as with, say, all the CrossgGen artists, who had contracts, came to work, used company supplies, and worked together in an office environment receiving assignments. Things were a little bit different in the '50s and '60s.

The final point I would make is that the families aren't necessarily greedier than the company, and the company definitely wasn't an angel in their business practices, so it's weird to see an entire family thrown into the gates of hell, while a large corporation is upheld as the epitome of goodness. The family didn't do this until Sonny Bono got his law passed through Congress which allowed for them to attempt to take back all of the copyrights for which they had a legitimate claim. I don't see how people following what the law allows (and even encourages them) to do can be automatically classified as greedy jerks. It's a complicated legal issue, and I would say the heirs have (at least) every bit as much claim as a faceless corporation. I'm not sure how I would rule on the issue, but I'm certainly not going to make any assumptions about the character of the Kirby family. Jack Kirby was an awesome guy, and I would tend to think he had a pretty good family, if going by Jack was any way to make an initial assessment of things. But this part is definitely in the opinion area, and separate from thee straight facts of all the other stuff above.

-TP