http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070410/.../ghostrider_dc

"Ghost Rider" creator sues over copyright By Leslie Simmons
Tue Apr 10, 5:49 AM ET


The creator of Ghost Rider has sued Marvel Enterprises, Sony Pictures Entertainment and several entities over what he claims is an unauthorized "joint venture and conspiracy to exploit, profit from and utilize" his copyrights to the comic book character.

Gary Friedrich and his company filed the 61-page complaint April 4 in federal court in Illinois claiming 21 violations based on the production and marketing of Sony's recent "Ghost Rider," starring Nicolas Cage and Eva Mendes. Friedrich claims the copyrights used in the film and in related products reverted from Marvel to him in 2001.

The defendants include Sony's Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, producers Relativity Media, Crystal Sky Pictures and Michael De Luca Prods. as well as Hasbro Inc. and Take-Two Interactive.

Friedrich alleges copyright infringement, and accuses Marvel of waste for failing "to properly utilize and capitalize" on the Ghost Rider character. Marvel's attempts to do so, Friedrich claims, have only damaged the value of his work by failing to properly promote and protect the characters and by accepting inadequate royalties from co-defendants. Friedrich also claims that toymaker Hasbro and videogame firm Take-Two have improperly created merchandise based on the characters.

Friedrich created the character of Johnny Blaze and his alter ego Ghost Rider in 1968. Three years later, he agreed to publish the character in comic books through Stan Lee's Magazine Management, which eventually became Marvel Entertainment.

Under the agreement, Magazine Management became holder of the copyright for the first issue, which explains the origin story of Ghost Rider. Lee's company also held the copyrights to subsequent Ghost Rider works.

However, Magazine Management allegedly never registered the work with the Copyright Office and, pursuant to federal law, Friedrich regained the copyrights to Ghost Rider in 2001.

"Nonetheless, without any compensation to and without any agreement, consent or participation of plaintiff ... in late 2006 or early 2007, the defendants herein wrongfully embarked upon a high-profile campaign, arrangement, joint venture and conspiracy to exploit, profit from and utilize plaintiff's copyrights, the Johnny Blaze character and persona, the origin story and the related characters and personas created by plaintiff, in various endeavors, including, but not limited to, the use of the same in movie theater presentations and promotions, commercials, action-figure toys, video games, clothing and novels," the lawsuit states.

The "Ghost Rider" film opened February 16 in North America and has grossed an estimated $214.6 million in worldwide box office, according to boxofficemojo.com.

Friedrich seeks unspecified damages for claims of copyright infringement, violations of federal and Illinois state unfair competition laws, negligence, waste, tortuous interference with prospective business expectancy, misappropriation of characters, unauthorized use of the characters and false advertising and endorsement.

A Sony spokesman said the studio had no comment on the suit and had not been served with the complaint.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

If Ghost Rider was a DC property, they would kill him off in Countdown.

Sounds like someone didn't do thier homework at Marvel and Sony. Let the head chopping begin!

Man Im glad there getting ______ over for that ____ movie.

Serves them right for not using the much better Danny Ketch version for the movie

My only question is that if this was such a big deal to him, why did he not raise suit with the new run being written by Garth Ennis? Not only did that come out quite a bit of time before the movie, but it did more to defamize the character than Cage's acting. It comes down to binary language. A one followed by a LOT of zeroes.

I hate to jump to conclusions about something like this when I don't know all the details, but it sounds like Gary Friedrich is just looking for money now that the movie was released.

If he's had the rights in his hands for 6 years, and is so worried about them ruining the character's marketability, why didn't he file a suit earlier? Marvel's done more things in the last 6 years to ruin the Johnny Blaze GR than just this movie, so why not take an interest sooner?

Dollah Dollah Bill$ Ya'll

Ugh! I hate when people like him do #### like this. That's the kind of stuff that just pisses me off!

I thought copyrights needed to be actually defended for them to not pass into public domain. I know there are a few movies out there where somebody chose not to renew the license ("Charade" for one of the more popular examples) and they didn't revert to the owner.

I really doubt that Friedrich has much of a leg to stand on. Particularly considering that if you look at Wikipedia, it looks as if he's not the only one who's claiming ownership of the character.

He must be happy with the money he receive (IF he still receive money for his character) and he must be happy for have his character in a Movie soo big like this.

He'll scream and shout, his lawyers will annoy people for awhile, he'll ask for a billion dollars and get a few mil in go away money.

The american legal system at its finest

Well, it is how the system works. Though a smarter time to do this would have been as the Ghost Rider movie was preparing to open and then try to block it's release.

This is similar to Marv Wolfman's litigation before the Blade movie came out. I won't get into the differences (I assume most would find them boring) but this guy could have a flaming leg to stand on if he is correct and no one registered the copyright. Big oops.

Best job I ever had, for a year I was an attorney in Marvel's legal department. As a lifelong comic fan, it was awesome answering legal questions about what they could and could not do, show, etc. in the comics. Part of that was some in-depth comic analysis for the Wolfman litigation, since Wolfman also claimed legal ownership of the Richard Ryder Nova character. He claimed to have created it during college and brought it to Marvel even though it was done under work for hire agreement. It was awesome to be able to read his college comics and detail some fine differences between that and what he did for Marvel. A lot of the work I did could not have been done by a non-comic book fan. I would often have to explain how things were different two or three times to the attorneys handling the case so they could understand why a subtle difference can make the characters distinguishably different.

If anyone is interested in specifics, PM me and I will fill you in or just post it here on the Realms. Oddly enough, to show you the state of Marvel circa 1999-2000, I never signed any non-disclosure agreement about the work I performed. I would have but they never presented me with one. Unlike other lawsuits I was involved in and had to sign NDA's (that was for you ro-gan, you are missed).

Any way, my .02.

I'd certainly be interested

Serious question here. Why is ro-gan missed? What happened?