UPDATE: Sega Secures Copyrights for Several Archie Sonic Comics

In finding out about Scott Shaw’s copyright registrations yesterday, we found something else that’s mighty intriguing: Sega themselves have begun securing copyrights to several Archie works and compilations.

A search of the US Copyright Office’s database reveals Sega holds formal registration to two recent compilations, The Archie Collection #657B and Archie Collection #658B.  Collection #657B covers Sonic #233, Sonic Super Special Magazine #2, and Sonic Universe #36.  Collection #658B covers Sonic Universe #37, the main series’s #234, and Sonic Universe Graphic Novel #2.  Both registrations were formalized this year.In addition, Sega has secured copyrights to nearly the entire individual issues of the Knuckles comic series.  Though the series was first published in 1997, rights to issues four through 32 were only secured last month, according to public records.Three more Sega registrations to the comics formalized in 2011 cover main issues 228 through 230 and their cover variants, Sonic Universe #31-33, Sonic Universe Graphic Novel #1, Knuckles Archives #1, and two other Sonic comic specials published that year.

All registration descriptions note the rights to “print material” were transferred “by written agreement” from Archie Comics.  Archie is listed as an employer for hire in many of these listing.  For recent issues, entries claim authorship to both “Art & Text.”  In the case of the Knuckles series, the authorship claim is to “contribution(s) to a collective work.”Much of the material Sega and Archie protected–the Knuckles Archives and Sonic Super Special magazines in particular–includes stories written and drawn by Ken Penders, who is in the middle of a civil case with Archie Comics over who owns the rights to work he produced for the series and later copyrighted. 

You may also remember that Penders filed suit against both Sega and Electronic Arts with those copyrights in tow, over storylines used in Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood eerily similar to Penders’s own work.  That case is, at last check, in appeal.The swath of registrations is the first time Sega has secured copyright protection for the Archie comics in over a decade.Should Penders’s own case with Sega be elevated, or some judgment in the Archie is awarded in Penders’s favor, these copyrights could come in handy–if they don’t clash with Penders’s own registrations.  The bottom line: If Penders prevails in the Archie case, in whole or in part, it likely does not mean his legal travels are over.