Disney went out and bought the laws they wanted.

wasn't it common knowledge by the time the 60s and 70s arrived that it was work-for-hire?

I would be curious to know on what grounds Friedrich even thought he had a case.

...Although there never was any serious dispute that Marvel owned whatever share of GR Gary Friedrich was claiming (personally, I'm not a mind reader but I think Friedrich was hoping for some kind of settlement), there remains two legal issues that Ty obviously didn't grasp:

2.1) When Moebius drew his SILVER SURFER with Stan Lee, he got royalties and he was still getting them when Starwatcher split in 2000. You will note that modern-day WFH agreements spell out that the money you're getting will be the sole compensation you will ever receive and you're not entitled to anything else. It is spelled out because if it is not, courts are at liberty to interpret the contract and decide whether or not you should be gettong something extra.

The back-of-the-check contract signed by Gary did transfer ownership of GR to Marvel, and the amount of that check was the consideration for publishing rights, but nowhere did it actually state (as it does today) that it was the ONLY consideration to which Gary might be entitled in the event of a film or a TV series. The Court could have easily decided that on the absence of that clause, Gary was owed something.

2.2.) There is a famous case about singer Peggy Lee who won her suit against Disney for their reuse of her songs in LADY & THE TRAMP on video, because that medium didn't exist when she signed her original agreement with the Mouse, and contracts at that time didn't specify the now standard "and other media to be invented in the future". The Court chose to interpret that lack of specificity in favor of Peggy Lee. When Marvel sold the rights to GR to the studio which produced it, they likely sold the video, DVD and game rights. These media did not exist when Friedrich signed his back of the check contract which did not list any and all future media. Therefore, based on the Peggy Lee case, the Court could have found that Marvel didn't own those rights, and therefore couldn't resell them, or, as in the Peggy Lee case, simply that they owe the plaintiff some kind of percentage, that's all.

So it remains my contention that Marvel owes "something" to Friedrich (and Ploog as well) based not on the publishing, but purely on the disposition of the multimedia rights to GR. That the Judge decided otherwise is a tough break for creators, and unjust.

3) Which brings me to my next point, which is that documentary standards are being unfairly applied throughout the judicial system, and somehow mistakes always seem to favor the corporations, not the small guy. The enforceability of a contract depends on accurate documentation which must be produced in Court. If you have a mortgage, but the bank cannot produce your properly signed promissory note, then the court has the possibility of nullifying your mortgage. It's happened in a few rare cases, but more often than not, people have been thrown out of their homes despite banks being unable to produce a properly signed note.

In this case, has any of you seen the back of the check signed by Friedrich?
Was that check properly endorsed? Was there anything crossed out? Why should mistakes in documentation automatically benefit the corporations, and the little guy should be held to standards of evidence that the companies themselves don't respect? Why did the Judge assume that the paperwork was in order & automatically benefited Marvel? What I'm saying is, if people can lose their homes despite proper paperwork, well, then, Marvel could lose GR despite its paperwork. It's up to the Court.

Seems like three solid reasons.

For me the difference has always been pretty clear distinction, that get easily muddied in practice.

Writing and/or drawing a Spiderman comic is one thing, inventing Spiderman is another. But, in the process of creating a comic for an existing character like Spiderman, you might invent something new, whether it be characters, concepts, whatever.

If Stan Lee and Jack Kirby got a got a creator royalty for X-men, what should Dave Cockrum and Chris Claremont get for re-inventing the X-men and creating the template for the comics, animated cartoons and movies for decades, that makes way more money than the original ever did. Who really deserves compensation from the other media? Add Wolverine to the mix and it gets even muddier.

And if Siegel and Shuster deserved compensation for Superman, and Stan Lee and his family got millions how is it Jack Kirby only received work-for-hire compensation for co-creating the vast majority of the characters and concepts that are still being exploited today? Why shouldn't the men who created characters, even more recent characters like Blade and Ghost Rider deserve some part of the money being generated by their creations, beyond their original work-for-hire situation? These characters couldn't have been nearly as popular without Marvel, but where would Marvel have been without these creators?

I refuse to believe that their isn't something better to be done here, for the handful of people who invented all this stuff.

I didn't ask about "seems like." I asked about what specifically made Friedrich think he had a case, especially in light of the Blade case that had already turned out in favor of Marvel.

I would be curious to know on what grounds Friedrich even thought he had a case.