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Ghost Rider and Strategic Behavior
This is an interesting case dealing with a disputed copyright over the recent Ghost Rider movie.
Basically, Ghost Rider was a work for hire creation for Marvel comics. One of Ghost Rider's creators is disputing the way the copyright was registered, arguing that in effect that the copyright reverted back to him when Marvel failed to register it correctly.
The interesting wrinkle in this case is the strategic behavior on the part of the creator. He became aware of this problem in 2001, but waited until 2007 to bring the issue up. He explicitly said back in 2001 that he was waiting until Marvel did something very profitable with the character (ie Make a movie), before arguing over his claim on the copyright.
I think it will be very interesting to see how the court analyzes this last part. Does the court want to encourage such strategic behavior? Certainly from the creator's perspective, the value of the copyright has greatly increased as a result of the successful movie, but should he have been allowed to sit and wait for someone to make money from the copyrighted works before asserting his claim. For all intents and purposes, the creator here seems to be acting like a "copyright troll".
Posted by at April 10, 2007 3:18 PM
in Current Events
