IP Law Daily, COPYRIGHT—S.D.N.Y.: Owner of Superman franchise remains firmly in the hands of DC Comics, (Apr 25, 2025)

By Matthew Hersh, J.D.

A co-author’s heir cannot claw back the foreign rights.

A claim that a leading comic book company exploited the Superman comic franchise overseas could not be heard in a federal court because there was no diversity of parties and no federal question raised, the federal court for Manhattan has held. The court, in dismissing the complaint, emphasized that the lawsuit did not arise under the Copyright Act and it did not fall within the “slim category” of exceptions in which there might be a substantial federal interest even without a federal statute at stake (Peary v. DC Comics, Inc., No. 25-CV-910 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 24, 2025)).

The lawsuit was aptly characterized by the court as “the latest installment in a long-running saga regarding the ownership of copyrights in Superman—a story almost as old as the Man of Steel himself.” The complaint was brought by Mark Warren Peary, the nephew of Superman co-creator Joseph Shuster and the executor of Shuster’s estate, against DC Comics. Back in 1938, Shuster and his co-author Jerome Siegel assigned the rights to Superman to the predecessor of the comic franchise. Sixty-five years later, in 2003, Peary attempted to terminate the assignment under the Copyright Act. However, DC Comics sought and obtained a declaration that the notice of termination filed by the Estate was invalid under U.S. copyright law.

Now Peary has taken a new tack. Under the laws of Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia, he contends, the rights to Superman automatically reverted back to him—regardless of the outcome of the termination rights in this country. Thus, Peary filed a copyright infringement complaint against DC Comics alleging that they infringed the copyright laws of those countries by exploiting the Superman franchise.

DC Comics moved to dismiss on grounds of subject matter jurisdiction, leading to this opinion.

Subject matter jurisdiction. The court dismissed the complaint on grounds of subject matter jurisdiction. There was no diversity jurisdiction, the court found, because even though Peary and DC Comics were in different states, Peary brought his claim on behalf of the estate—and that estate, like DC Comics, was located in California. Nor was there federal question jurisdiction, the court found, because the case did not arise under the Copyright Act or any other federal statute. Thus, the case could not be heard at all in the Manhattan court.

Nor did the case fall into any exception that would enable it to be heard in a federal forum, the court held. Under the so-called “substantial federal question doctrine,” the court noted, in certain cases federal-question jurisdiction will lie over state-law claims that “implicate significant federal issues.” But that doctrine, the Supreme Court has made clear, calls for federal jurisdiction over only a “special and small category” of cases. This case did not fall into the “slim category” of cases applicable, the court found. Peary argued that his foreign claims implicated several ancillary questions about the nature of his copyrights under U.S. copyright law and the Berne Convention—including, for instance, where the work was a work for hire and how long the term of copyright protection extended. But these issues raised “fact-bound and situation-specific questions whose import is largely confined to the particular circumstances of this dispute,” the court noted. Thus, the present case was “poles” from those in which the doctrine had been applied. The exception would not apply.

The Case is No. 25-CV-910.

Judge: Furman, J.

Attorneys: Marc Toberoff (Toberoff & Associates P.C.) for Mark Warren Peary. Natasha Waglow Teleanu (O'Melveny & Myers LLP) for DC Comics, Inc., DC Comics, DC Entertainment, Inc., and Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc.

Companies: DC Comics, Inc.; DC Comics; DC Entertainment, Inc.; Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc.

Cases: Copyright NewJerseyNews GCNNews