InsideCounsel » March 2005
The Woman Of Steel
DC Comic's General Counsel Lillian Laseron Fights To Keep The Superman Copyright From Slipping Through Her Client's Fingers.
Anybody of any importance in Superman's life has the initials L.L. His best friend as a kid and archenemy as an adult was Lex Luther; his high-school sweetheart was Lana Lang; the love of his life in college was Lori Lemaris; his romantic interest on the planet Krypton was Lyla Lerrol; and his wife is Lois Lane. It seems fitting, then, that Superman's legal protector in the real world is 54-year-old Lillian Laserson, senior vice president and general counsel of DC Comics Inc.Laserson didn't get the job as head lawyer of the New York-based publisher because her initials are L.L. She got it because she is, as one of her colleagues put it, "a damn good lawyer." But the L.L. connection certainly didn't hurt.
"We hired Lillian because she had the background for the job," says DC Comics CEO Paul Levitz. "The fact that her initials were L.L. and she was familiar with Superman lore may have helped a little."
DC is going to need Laserson's legal skills in the coming years. The family of one of the original creators of Superman filed a request in 1998 to regain control of 50 percent of the copyright to the character; the family of the other creator recently asked DC to return the remaining portion by 2013. That means that by 2013, the company may no longer own the copyright to one of the most recognized heroes in American pop culture.
The kryptonite that is draining DC of its most prized intellectual property is a number of amendments to the Copyright Act. When Congress extended the life of copyrights in 1976 and 1998, it also gave creators and their heirs an opportunity to regain ownership of older copyrights. The idea was to allow them to profit from these extensions and also rectify any bad deals they may have entered into. In the comic book industry, many creators during the Golden Age of comics (1930�1950) assigned their copyrights to publishers for next to nothing. The creators of Superman—Jerry Siegel (the writer) and Joe Shuster (the artist)—fall into that category. In 1938 the two handed over the Superman copyright to the predecessor of DC for $130.
Nobody on either side, including Laserson, is willing to talk about the issue. However, rumors have been flying around the comic book industry for years that DC and the two families had negotiated a settlement. That now seems far from the truth.
In October 2004 the Siegel heirs filed suit in a California district court against Warner Brothers Entertainment Inc. and Time Warner Inc., which owns DC Comics and Warner Brothers, for refusing to abide by the termination notice and compensate the Siegels for their fair share of profits from the Superman copyright. In addition both the Siegel and Shuster families have teamed up with Los Angeles lawyer and movie producer Marc Toberoff—an indication the families may be shopping around for a new home for the Man of Steel. Obviously, DC isn't going to hand over its most valued asset without putting up one hell of a legal battle. And if you were going to take on a Hollywood producer and some angry heirs, then the 5-foot, 2-inch tall lawyer from DC Comics just might be the right person for the job.
"Lillian approaches people and problems in a much less overtly aggressive way than most lawyers," says Carol Simkin, who was a partner at Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman when Laserson was an associate there from 1986 to 1987. "Rather than feeling that she has to go in with two arms punching, she will find solutions that are holistic. She has this ability to come up with solutions and put things together. For her it is like making breakfast in the morning—it's easy."
Happier Days
Perhaps the reason Laserson's approach is different from that of most lawyers is because law is her second career.
