US
U.S. Marvel Company going to fight with the original author of Marvel characters in Court.
•
On September 24, 2021, the New York Times reported that Walt Disney and Marvel
of the United States entered the stage of litigation against the heirs of the character
author's estate for character rights in the Avengers series.
The
issued characters in the dispute include Iron Man, Spider-Man, Doctor Strange,
Black Widow, Hawkeye, Thor, and Ant-Man. This was triggered in August 2021,
when Spider-Man's author Steve Ditko's estate manager notified him of the
transfer of Spider-Man's rights under copyright law. According to the US
copyright law, the author or heir can recover the rights from the publisher
after a certain period of time, and as for the above notification, Spider-Man's
rights are scheduled to pass from Marvel to Ditko in June 2023. The heirs of
other characters notified that Marvel's copyright on the characters would be
lost one after another from the first half of 2023, and argued that Marvel
should pay a fair price to the creators in order to maintain the character's
copyright based on the Copyright Act.
▲ marvel.com In
order to invalidate the notice of copyright termination by the heirs, Marvel is
demanding a ruling against heirs such as Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and Gene Colan
to declare that these characters are not subject to copyright transfer because
they are commercial works (Work Made for Hire). Specifically, they claim that
these works were created through employment, and therefore the copyright
cancellation notice from the heirs is invalid and has no legal effect because
the user, Marvel, owns the copyright. On the other hand, the heir's side
revealed that all the issued characters were not work-related works, and the
creators were all freelancers or independent contractors, and they worked in
their own residences and sometimes received a small amount of transportation
costs, they are not regular employees.
Walt
Disney has been at the center of a number of intellectual property disputes
involving characters, including that investing 18 years in a copyright
infringement lawsuit related Winnie the Pooh and supporting legislation to
extend Mickey Mouse's protection period. In 2014, Marvel settled a lawsuit
similar to this one in a tens of millions of dollars settlement with cartoonist
Jack Kirby, who sought to reclaim rights to characters like Captain America and
Spider-Man. Meanwhile, Marc Toberoff, an attorney who has built a reputation
for representing creators who make claims for old television shows, movies and
comics in Hollywood, said the lawsuit would correct the legal injustices for
the creators.
<Source>
https://www.kiip.re.kr/board/trend/view.do?bd_gb=trend&bd_cd=1&bd_item=0&po_item_gb=&po_no=20730
UK
UK Court of Appeal rejects DABUS' inventorship
• On September 21, 2021, the UK
Court of Appeal ruled that the artificial intelligence 'DABUS' cannot be an
inventor.
The UK Intellectual Property
Office (UKIPO) has rejected for two patent applications which described Dr.
Stephen Thaler's artificial intelligence creation machine 'DABUS' as the
inventor on the grounds that it did not meet the requirements of Article 13(2)
of the UK Patents Act 1977. Dr. Thaler filed a lawsuit against the rejection in
the High Court of England, but the court stated that “only a person could make
an application for a patent” and the invention of DABUS was not admitted and
Dr. Thaler appealed to the Court of Appeal.
▲ artificialinventor.com
The British Court of Appeal cited
a lower court ruling that DABUS could not be an inventor, but three judges have
different kind of opinions as follows;
(1) majority opinion
• (Arnold) Dr. Thaler did not
comply with the '(a) inventor identification and (b) derivation of rights'
requirements under section 13(2) of the UK Patent Act, and it is reasonable to
consider that the application has been withdrawn accordingly.
• (Elisabeth Laing) I agree with
Judge Arnold. Dr. Thaler did not comply with patent law if he actively asserted
that the inventor was not a person.
(2) Minority opinion
• (Birss) Under British law, an
inventor is the person who actually invented the invention, and Dr. Thaler is
the owner and operator of the creative machine he has created, owned and
managed, and is therefore entitled to apply for and obtain patents and rights,
so he may be entitled to patents under section 13 of the Act. (2) meets the
requirements of Article (2);
Dr. Stephen Thaler said he plans
to appeal to the British Supreme Court.
<Source>
https://www.kiip.re.kr/board/trend/view.do?bd_gb=trend&bd_cd=1&bd_item=0&po_item_gb=&po_no=20722
