The Marvel/Kirby Settlement Agreement

The controversy that I’ve chosen is the Marvel/Kirby settlement agreement. The family of the comic book legend Jack Kirby sued Marvel for rights to the characters that he had created over the years. The Kirby’s had sought to terminate grants of copyrights to the characters, under section 304 (c) (2) of the copyright act of 1976. According to Jacob Reiser (2014), “This copyright act will grant an author or his/her descendants the right to recovered an author’s copyrights granted or transferred to another party by statutorily terminating the prior grant or transfer.” But this termination right does not apply to a ‘made for hire’ works, and Marvel argued that Kirby’s work that time is under their direction. After a long years of court battle,