Page:Siegel v. National Periodical Publications (508 F.2d 909).pdf/6

 right to the use of the characters and story, continuity and title of [the] strip … to you and your assigns to have and hold forever” (emphasis added). Moreover, the authors agreed not to “employ said characters or said story … or sell any like strip or story … at any time hereafter to any other person, firm or corporation …” (emphasis added).

The state court was called upon to construe these instruments and the determination of that court that the plaintiffs intended to convey all their rights, including implicitly the renewal of the copyright, was, in our view, entirely proper. In any event, that decision is binding on us here.

The court below held that Superman was also a “work for hire” within the meaning of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 26; since this conclusion was based upon the fact findings of the state court, the court below further concluded that res judicata would bar the plaintiffs from relitigating the factual basis of the “work for hire” point. We disagree. While it is evident that the state court concluded as a matter of law that the plaintiffs conveyed all their rights in Superman to the defendants, there was no conclusion of law in the state court that the comic strip was a work for hire so as to create the presumption that the employer was the author. That issue was not litigated at all in the state court. On the contrary, that court’s finding of fact no. 8 was that the plaintiffs were “the originators and authors of the cartoon character Superman and of the title Superman and first created cartoon material in which the said character and title first appeared in 1934….” The court below instead relied upon finding of fact no. 22 in which the state court found that the plaintiffs did revise and expand the Superman material at the request of the defendants and that this revised material constituted the formula for the ensuing series of strips. We do not consider this tantamount to a conclusion that Superman was a work for hire. That doctrine is applicable only when the employee’s work is produced at the instance and expense of the employer, Brattleboro Publishing Co. v. Winmill Publishing Corp., 369 F.2d 565, 567 (2d Cir. 1966), or, in other words, when the “ ‘motivating factor in producing the work was the employer who induced the creation…,’ ” Picture Music, Inc. v. Bourne, Inc., 457 F.2d 1213, 1216 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 409 U.S. 997, 93 S.Ct. 320, 34 L.Ed.2d 262 (1972). Superman had been spawned by the plaintiffs four years before the relationship between his authors and the defendants existed. We consider Scherr v. Universal Match Corp., 417 F.2d 497 (2d Cir. 1969), cert. denied, 397 U.S. 936, 90 S.Ct. 845, 25 L.Ed.2d 116 (1970), cited below, to be distinguishable. In that case two servicemen had created a small clay model of an infantryman. Their Army superiors directed them thereafter to sculp a statue 25 feet high with a 12 foot figure of a charging infantryman; the court found this larger creation to differ from the model. The copyright was held to be the property of the United States under the work for hire doctrine. In the case before us Superman and his miraculous powers were completely developed long before the employment relationship was instituted. The record indicates that the revisions directed by the defendants were simply to accommodate Superman to a magazine format. We do not consider this sufficient to create the presumption that the strip was a work for hire.

Accordingly, we affirm the dismissal of the complaint, but only on the ground that the 1947 state court action, in interpreting the agreements between the parties, precludes the plaintiffs from contesting ever again that all rights in Superman, including the renewal copyright, have passed forever to defendants.