The Supreme Court not only declined to hear the gay marriage appeal, they also declined an appeal by the heirs of Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, the guys who created Superman, bringing to an end their attempt to take back the copyright for the character.
Of course, unlike some other work-for-hire comic creator scandals, it appears there had been a number of agreements and settlements reached since then between the creators and DC. That seems to have tipped the scales for the Superman case.
For what it's worth, Action Comics No. 1 goes into Public Domain in the US in 2033, from a copyright perspective (though Superman's likeness, etc., will still be trademarked). Of course, it seems likely that the Big Media companies (starting with Disney) will be pushing very hard for still more extensions to copyright well before then.
Supreme Court won’t hear Superman heirs’ copyright case
The most famous comic character was sold for $130—but that’s not the whole story.
My pre-caffeinated mind saw this title, and immediately went to “The Kryptonian Supreme Court refused to hear the gay marriage case, which led to the destruction of Krypton…”
I’ve had my coffee now.
@George – Well, to hear some Right Wing folk talking about it …
I still think that copyright is dead easy to fix. Just start the clock from the most recent use by the original creator instead of the point of its creation. Maybe allow for the rights to be transferred once, to sell to a corporation and pass to heirs. Boom, the stuff that's still in active use gets protected, while everything else gets to pass into public domain.
Oh, there's any number of dead easy ways to "fix" the system. The problem is that there's enough money involved that the folk with the largest amount of it have "fixed" it to their satisfaction.