Ruling is approaching in the Shuster estate’s attempt to reclaim ‘SUPERMAN’ rights.

I don’t really understand the legal mumbo jumbo that is going on in the Shuster estate’s attempt to reclaim the rights to the Super-Man. They’re in a really righteous arm wrestling match with DC, I know that. There’s probably like a zillion bucks on the line, I know that too. But who is in the right? What the motions mean? Not even.

Robot 6:

A federal judge is set to decide whether the estate of Superman co-creator Joe Shuster can reclaim a portion of the rights to the Man of Steel.

Variety reports U.S. District Judge Otis Wright has canceled a hearing scheduled for Aug. 20 on a DC Comics motion for summary judgment in the drawn-out, and increasingly bitter, legal dispute, saying he will decide the matter without oral argument.

With the window opening next year for the Shuster estate to recapture its stake in the copyright to the first Superman story in Action Comics #1, DC filed the motion last month revisiting its earlier claims that termination notice filed in 2003 by the artist’s nephew Mark Warren Seavy is invalid. The heirs of Shuster’s collaborator Jerry Siegel reclaimed their portion of the rights in 2008 and 2009 under a provision of the U.S. Copyright Act.

The publisher argues the Shuster termination notice is voided, in part, by a 1992 agreement in which the estate relinquished all claims to the Man of Steel in exchange for “more than $600,000 and other benefits,” which included paying Shuster’s debts following his death earlier that year and providing his sister Jean Peavy with a $25,000 annual pension.

Attorney Marc Toberoff, who represents both families, counters that the survivor payments constitute a “modest” pension increase from an earlier agreement, and that the 1992 contract makes no mention of termination rights.

Does this make any sense…to any of you? Help a dude out.