Updates on Ken Penders's Copyright Cases
With New York Comic Con kicking off in a couple of hours, we wondered where things stood with Ken Penders, the former Archie Sonic comics writer at the center of two legal disputes concerning work he produced.
We checked up on the case he filed against Sega of America and Electronic Arts today, and that’s still slowly moving along, in the early discovery phases. There is no public record as yet to indicate whether either company named as a defendant have even filed a response to the lawsuit yet, but Penders’s complaint again stems from those copyrights he filed for concerning the characters he developed while writing for the Sonic series.
The big one–the one in which Penders is named as a defendant against Archie comics–is getting quite nasty. Much of it has to do with evidence Penders attempted to submit after the case’s discovery deadline. Though Penders’s counsel filed a Motion in limine, asking a judge to admit certain evidence as part of the case, Archie’s attorneys struck back in recent weeks with a Motion to Strike said evidence and those efforts from the record, as well as a later motion attempting to sanction Penders in the case for those actions.
That evidence allegedly included correspondence Penders had with the US Copyright Office and other material. The bottom line: With this sort of gamesmanship, expect Archie v. Penders to go to trial in the future. We’ll keep you updated on anything more we learn in either matter.
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How did this get started? Did he draw an original character that SEGA and Archie later use in which he kept the rights to himself? I’d imagine that both SEGA and Archie have a policy that when an artist makes a character for these companies’ products, the characters then belong to those companies.
ROUND ONE… FIGHT!!
@Ophelia
IIRC, Penders wanted to take back the characters he had created for the Sonic comic to use them in his own works. This would mean that he’d effectively wipe out anyone not connected to the games, SatAM or AoStH. He also wanted pay for works he had done and wasn’t, apparently, paid right for.
Of course, a lot of this has gone on for some time, I can’t exactly remember all the details
Go Archie! Stick it to Penders!
Why are people so sue happy?
Ken Penders is the TRUE and HONEST creator of Sonichu.
I know the current Sonic: Genesis storyline is just temporary, but if Penders gets his way we could be seeing another reboot down the road…
I wonder if in the comics they are going to explain how Hershey died. I’m guessing they just said she’s dead because she is apparently the one character that Penders really does have legal rights over.
He doesn’t know when to give up…like Candy said stick it to him Archie
@sonictoast
Ian has said that the current legal battle has had no effect on the storyline.
The EA case, doesn’t that involve a few elements used in Sonic Chronicles?
Wait…what characters does he even own? Like all or a majority of the comic characters? (Like Julie Su and all the countless others?) Or just a few of them? I mean, if he wins, would that mean the comic would cease to exist or would it mean they’d just have to focus/use characters only in the games?
I cannot believe how foolish he was for trying to sue EA and Sega before the Archie one was even finished. I mean, if he loses the Archie case and doesn’t get his oh-so-precious copyrights, then he automatically loses the case against the other two companies!
@MaddiChan
It’s not just characters. If Penders wins then not only are characters affected but storylines will be affected as well.
Archie wouldn’t be able to use places like Moebius(Anti-Mobius), and character history. Archie wouldn’t be able to show flashbacks of characters since Penders created alot of the characters history.
It’s not very complicated at all really:
If he worked for them as an employee: then they own anything that he creates during company time.
If he worked on commission (which I doubt is the case): then he owns what he creates.
This applies to all lines of business, not just comic books (for example: the guy that invented post-it notes. His job didn’t involve inventing or anything like that, but since he invented them during company time: the company owned his idea)
This guy sounds way too arrogant for his own good, and when he looses this case he will crash HARD.
“Raises glass of Wine.”
A toast to the utter decimation of Ken’s Career
@TLSonic
Kind of a harsh thing to say, don’t you think? Yes, it’s kinda silly to assume ownership of characters created for another well-known franchise, but It’s not like he’s hurting anybody. Even though I completely loathe the comic, I wish him the best. Losing this case could seriously hurt him financially.
@ Myst
I just don’t understand why he waited years after he left the company to claim the characters. Plus his “creations” are tied to the canon of the book because they all involve Knuckles, Sonic, Robotnik/Eggman, and the Chaos Emralds. To remove them would make the book unrecognizable. The reason I believe his career is over is that even if he wins, who is going to want to work with him at that point. He’ll be know as that guy who destroyed a long running comic for his own gain. Plus what does he plan to do with these characters anyway, he mention some book that would focus on the guardians, but how would he tell that story without any of the Sega elements and what publishing company would touch him knowing his history. Ken just can’t see how this is a lose/lose case for him. I am being harsh cause I don’t believe Ken realizes the true consequences of his actions. I just have no respect for the guy.
@TLSonic: Right, If he gains the rights to the guardians what can he do with them cuz it touches with Knuckles a sega character. Plus the guardians are designed like red echindas like Knuckles so Sega could sue him.
@JustinSane
Ken is not now nor has he ever been an employee of Archie Comics. All of the work he’s done was as a freelance agent, as were most of the creatives freelancers in the Sonic Comic. Therefore all of his work is his own.
@darkgomugomu
It was Archie that sued Ken when he announced his ownership of the copyrights. Ken did NOT sue Archie. He was quite willing to work out an amicable agreement for all parties, and there was a discussion along those lines. But it was quite clear during those talks that Archie did not want to reach an agreement.
So how does Penders have the money to continue us? From what I heard he was trying to get the case thrown out cause of money problems. Yet on his forum he calms to have four lawyers working on this case.
@BobR
Ian said that every freelancer that works with Archie has to sign a contract.