What fine print does this dribbling idiot think he's reading that says he's the sole owner of somebody else's characters? What part of "work he made during his time at Archie is totally SEGA's property" does he just not understand?
This is silly and frivolous. I have not read the whole topic (so correct me if I'm misstating anything), but basic copyright/agency law wins the day here. When you create content for a corporate principal, for profit, typically there is an express or implied understanding that you are making content for the principal and not for yourself. Therefore, you have no rights to the content once you break ties. If you don't want your creative freedom taken away, either don't leave the company or don't work for it to begin with. His actions after his leaving of Archie also breaks basic agency law. When you leave employment from a principal, there is typically no duty not to compete (IE: he can make other comics as far as the day is long). However, you also have a duty not to mess with the business of your former principal by afterwards by doing things like stealing trade secrets or sabotaging your former employer's goodwill, and here by trying to take back IP that was never his, he's creating problems for his former employer to carry out its business Any court will see he's acting in bad faith. His lashing out won't get him far.
So far it seems like Ken is just becoming more and more delusional.He should realize that he could have probably created his own original series by now, made it heavily like the old without infringing copyrights and just continue on with his life. But instead he has to have those specific characters and as such is headed for a brick wall.
So, another new claim from Penders regarding why he's suddenly doing this: A reply from someone else: Ken again: I'd love to reply asking him about this, because it seems he's claiming Archie Comics has already said that he's the rightful owner of the characters he's claiming, but it really looks like I've been banned from posting there. (Which is weird considering the only thing I ever did there was have a short argument with the guy regarding James Bond over a year ago. And this inability to post didn't start until just recently.) Anyone else want to ask him about it?
If I understand this correctly, Archie doesn't own Sonic, the characters, or the stories that happen in these comics. So I wonder when SEGA will come in and bitch slap Ken Penders for infringing on THEIR property that Archie has permission to use?
He probably hasn't actually done anything until now, meaning there's no base for Sega to sue over other than falsifying a claim (which probably gets them less money than an actual infringement — note I am not a lawyer). Anyone notice how this hole thing has stayed dormant until now? :/ Does anyone have a Justia account so we can find out the status of the lawsuit(s)? Or should I do it myself? :/
Why is a full grown adult man acting like a little bitchy child over these characters? The Chris-Chan comparison really does have merit.
The current situation feels like a parody of itself... I find it surprising to see some fans supporting him on this, but I suspect they might be too young to know what's really going on.
No freakin slag, Sherlock. It only says in every friggin issue that SEGA owns everything in the book. I like how he thinks he can produce this work with these blatant Sonic the Hedgehog characters. I wish SEGA would just lay down the law already and get this over with.
Wow the man is desperate to destroy what's left of his professional life. Jeez if I was on his position of "if I REALLY wanted to use the characters and setting" I just would create expys of my own to use them as I liked without any problems. But really now I find Sonic Live! a good sample of his personality.
Can't wait for SEGA to trample all over this guy. He should just move on from this all together before that happens.
If he wants to write about the characters so much, he could get a "real" job to support himself and just write fanfiction... it seems like the best thing to do when one wants to use someone else's characters.
He goal is to make money off of the characters he made with the story he help developed. It would be nice he comes back to Archie and continue working there like they offer him to do, but he didn't take that offer.
Characters and stories that he created for a licensed character that he does not own the license for. Personally I don't get it. It clearly states in every issue: "SEGA, Sonic the Hedgehog, and all related characters and indicia are either registered trademarks or trademarks of SEGA CORPORATION. Am I missing something? Even if Archie does not have a "Copyright" they have a licensing contract with SEGA to use their property for a specific purpose. Anything that is additionally created by whomever they contract/hire should become the intellectual property of the original party by default. The only way around that I would think would be if Ken had a stipulation in his contract with Archie that has SEGA's approval/signature that he owns the individual characters he created. However, there is an interesting article over here about it with the likes of DC and Marvel specifically: http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/steveorjoey/news/?a=41001 This part of it jumps out the most to me: 3. Work Made for Hire The issue of authorship is mute in the comic book world today because of the work-made-for-hire doctrine. Congress gave a detailed definition of the work-made-for-hire doctrine in the 1976 Act: A “work made for hire” is (1) a work prepared by an employee within the scope of his or her employment; or (2) a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire. For the purpose of the foregoing sentence, a “supplementary work” is a work prepared for publication as secondary adjunct to a work by another author for the purpose of introducing, concluding, illustrating, explaining, revising, commenting, upon, or assisting in the use of the other work, such as forewords, afterwords, pictorial illustrations, maps, charts, tables, editorial notes, musical arrangements, answer material for tests, bibliographies, appendixes, and indexes, and an “instructional text” is a literary, pictorial or graphic work prepared for publication and with the purpose of use in systematic instructional activities. (FN 30) With the work-for-hire doctrine there is no issue of who owns the copyright to a comic book character because once these individuals are under Marvels payroll all the intellectual property rights that are vested into a comic book, the heroes in them, and the heroes’ component parts are all owned by Marvel. Take out Marvel and insert Archie, which in turn would go to SEGA, and it pretty much sums itself up. I would hope Archie would be smart enough to do such a thing.
I think what Ken is trying to argue is that what he did doesn't count as work for hire because there was no specific contract.
On Ken's forum: Ha ha ha ha ha ! Oh boy is this guy for real? But then, there's a better post : http://www.kenpender...55&p=6087#p6087
