Legal Kryptonite

The heirs of Jerome Siegel have been engaged in a long standing legal battle with Warner Brothers. Siegel along with his creative partner Joseph Shuster are the original creators of Superman but signed away their rights to the character years ago when they were hired by Detective Comics. As pointed out in Techdirt, after years of litigation and changes in the copyright law, it's gotten down to Siegel's family getting back ownership of depictions of Superman's origin, the planet Krypton and his real parents, with Warner Bros. having rights to Superman's ability to fly, the term "kryptonite," the villain Lex Luthor, Jimmy Olsen, and some of Superman's powers. This mishigoss is a case study of how ridiculous copyright law can be. You can read the whole story behind this case here.

Ode to Sequential Liability

Oh the joys of sequential liability

An adventure in fiscal futility

Omnicom says the cost

Is to sign or get lost

If we did we'd lose all credibility.

Sue Me Sue You Blues

I've commented before on the issue of 3rd party infringement warranties in contracts with our clients, particularly our ad agency partners. Essentially, while we say that our work will be original we can never agree to any language that states our work won't infringe on the rights of a 3rd party because that statement leaves us open to frivolous law suits that could potentially put us out of business. Also, agreeing to this means we take on all of the risk rather than sharing it in a fair manner with the agency we're working for. Now comes the news a couple of weeks ago that Omnicom is now enforcing a sequential liability clause in its contracts with vendors which says that even though our contract is with the agency, if they don't get paid by their clients, we don't get paid. Needless to say this scenario is creating an uproar in the production community. Fortunately, we have organizations such as the Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA), of which Firstborn is a member, to push back on these unfair edicts. The net effect of the Omnicom mishigoss could be that companies who are producing great work will refuse to work with Omnicom and the slack will be taken up by crappy companies who will sign to anything and as a result, the quality of production will go in the toilet.