Co-creators, heirs and ownership

[Redfern]

What is the name of your state? Georgia

When two people collaborate to create an intellectual property, in this case, an on-line comic strip, and one of the co-creators passes away, does that "half" of the copyright transfer to the surviving co-creator, or does it transfer to the deceased co-creator's surviving family, in this case, his brother and mother?

Please note, we equally conceived characters and situations, my late partner wrote the finished dialogue as posted, whereas I handled the illustrative process, I composed the HTML documents and I paid for the domain name, www.mzzkiti.com.

There have been no "confrontations" with my late partner's surviving family, so it has not devolved into a nasty legal battle.

I would be willing to share what meager profits I might acquire from the sale of illustrations, T-shirts and mousepads, but in the case of future strips, can my late partner's surviving family make a "case" if they do not particularly like the direction of a story I were to theoretically script?

Sincerely,

Bill Redfern

 

[divgradcurl]

"When two people collaborate to create an intellectual property, in this case, an on-line comic strip, and one of the co-creators passes away, does that "half" of the copyright transfer to the surviving co-creator, or does it transfer to the deceased co-creator's surviving family, in this case, his brother and mother?"

The copyright owned by the deceased will transfer to whoever is specified in his will, or whoever gets it under GA's intestacy laws. It wouldn't go to you unless he willed it to you.

"Please note, we equally conceived characters and situations, my late partner wrote the finished dialogue as posted, whereas I handled the illustrative process, I composed the HTML documents and I paid for the domain name, www.mzzkiti.com."

The HTML and website are probably yours alone, unless you had some other agreement. The rest of the stuff -- the actual comics -- are probably co-owned by you and your partner's estate.

"I would be willing to share what meager profits I might acquire from the sale of illustrations, T-shirts and mousepads, but in the case of future strips, can my late partner's surviving family make a "case" if they do not particularly like the direction of a story I were to theoretically script?"

No. But here's the problem. When a copyright is owned by more than one entity, ANY one of the owners can sell their ownership rights to another, can license the work, or create their own derivative works, WITHOUT seeking permission from any of the other owners. In this case, they can't stop you from creating new works based onthe exisitng characters -- but you can't stop THEM from licensing the characters out to someone else, or creating their OWN new works based on the characters.

If you plan to continue developing this work, it would probably be best to find out who the copyrights were transferred to, and try and buy out their share, or at least figure out some way to work with them so things don't come back to haunt you in the future.

It might be a good time to sit down for an hour with a copyright lawyer and talk things over.

 

[Redfern]

Other people have also suggested the hiring of a copyright lawyer.

I forgot to mention that my late partner lived in Sacarmento, California, as does his surviving family, his brother and mother. Paul has been deceased since January 31, 2001 and I have since tried continuing the strip. Paul's family knows this and they have not sent any messages requesting me to stop.

I sincerely think Paul's brother would have written had either he or his mother objected. A common friend spent months trying to convince Paul's survivors to let him maintain a site Paul originally used to post his original fiction. A "fan" requested Paul's family if he could commission an outside artist to draw portraits of Paul's original characters. They were polite but they did state in no uncertain terms, "no." If they object, people know about it.

I just don't know how to approach Paul's family to discuss the copyright conditions of our joint venture without seeming like a greedy ghoul. I know, that's not a request for legal advice. That's a question better suited for an emotional therapist.

Sincerely,

Bill Redfern