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Underground > Comic Books >

Gaiman-McFarlane Lawsuit : Jury Decides

10:29 / 04.10.02

Information about this all over the net, but here’s one link… Any comments ?

http://161.58.84.234/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=000218

11:16 / 04.10.02

Full story also here.

Not sure there is much to say - All of Gaiman's contentions have been upheld, but McFarlane will surely contest the verdict as he did successfully with the tommy twist case.

Does this case have wider implications for the industry? I don't think so, there have been litigations about rights issues in the past, and this case is pretty specific.

I suppose the interesting thing is that barely any mention was made of the rights fans are most interested in- those of miracleman, most of the contentions were on the gaiman created spawn characters (the basis for the proposed 1997 rights trade).

Even if Gaiman is awarded those rights that McFarlane apparently bought from Eclipse it is by no means certain that those rights are worth a hill of beans as Dez Skinn apparently had a reversion clause in the contracts underwhich he sold his share to eclipse by which the rights would revert to him in the event of Eclipse ceasing to trade. How much that clause is actually worth is still open to debate... this ain't over by a long chalk...

12:19 / 04.10.02

Not much mention is made of the MM stuff, true, but it's still a large part of the subtext - the entire trial is upholding Gaiman's claims which ultimately constitute his right to hold the copyright on MM, based on the 1997 contract.

I like MacFarlane's lawyer here:
called it "a nightmare" in that the verdict held that Gaiman had a copyright interest in Medieval Spawn and Cagliostro, but also held that there was a contract in 1997 (in which Gaiman had agreed to transfer those rights to McFarlane for McFarlane's rights in Miracleman).

That's pretty good. "He doesn't have any right to this stuff, but we made a contract with him over it, anyway, which we'd now like to get out of."

12:23 / 04.10.02

Peter David , on his site, says much the same sort of thing :

“The most amusing bit was McFarlane's attorney stating that the verdict was a "nightmare" since it simultaneously held at Neil had copyright interest in Cagliostro and Spawn, but that there was also a contract in 1997 in which Neil had agreed to transfer the rights in exchange for Todd's interest in Miracleman. Amazingly, the attorney didn't seem to realize that both were true because his client had violated the 1997 agreement. It's like saying, "How can you claim my client saw a stop sign AND broke a traffic law?" Obviously, because the client then ignored the stop sign.”

Skewers it rather nicely, I’d say.

DBC