Adams v. Marvel: Iron Man Turns To Crime?

Posted by Leonard Pierce

Yes, it's All-Lawsuit Day here at the Screengrab, your one-stop shop for bizarre Hollywood litigation. And they don't come much more bizarre than the case of Adams vs. Marvel, Paramount, the story of which comes to us courtesy of a trade magazine called Photo District News.

Here's the skinny: the Adams in question is one Ronnie Adams, a Los Angeles-based freelance photographer (as he calls himself), or paparazzo (as his detractors would term him) who was in the employ of the JFX Agency last summer when he took some illicit snaps of the filming of what would become the blockbuster hit Iron Man. Marvel and Paramount, of course, would be the movie studios who produced and distributed that very movie -- in which one can see, for about three seconds of screen time, a fake newspaper headline under which is a photograph strongly resembling one that Adams says was his.

That's where it gets strange, because Adams -- who was, as do all paparazzi, taking pictures of a closed set, an activity of extremely dubious legality that is only not prosecuted because of the difficulty of enforcing the laws against it -- is suing Marvel and Paramount for unlawfully infringing his copyright and engaging in unfair competition against him. Paramount had seen the illicit snaps on an entertainment website and demanded that they be removed, seeing as they constituted...well, a copyright infringement. That's nothing new, of course, so the reat twist comes in when Marvel used the snaps in the film itself without compensation. So, what Adams is actually seeking is monetary compensation from the companies over the use of photos he wasn't allowed to take in the first place. It's not as if his case is without merit -- if true, it means that Marvel and Paramount were indeed using something that kinda sorta didn't belong to them -- but Adams is making a claim based on what is, technically, an illegal activity, which isn't something a judge is likely to want to admit into precedent.

Marvel and Paramount's lawyers couldn't be reached for comment, probably because they can't figure the damn thing out either.

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Posted Jun 24 2008, 02:45 PM

Filed under: leonard pierce, iron man, paramount pictures, marvel films, lawsuit, ronnie adams, jfx agency

Comments

eurrapanzy said:

this is the area of copyright law i've always hated most. in the patent regime, if you develop an improvement to a technology that you don't have the right to practice in, it's called a blocking patent and case law says you absolutely can sue the owner of the base technology.

in copyright law, nobody's really sure. that's why we had the suit by jk rowling about a harry potter encyclopedia, and this other crap. marvel and paramount probably have trespass and invasion of privacy claims against the photographer, and morally he doesn't have anything to stand on. however, copyright isn't supposed to be about acting morally, it's supposed to be strict liability. strictly speaking, he should win, and then marvel should sue the pants off him.

June 24, 2008 11:18 PM

John said:

How could Marvel sue the pants off of the photographer if when he took the picture he was standing on a public street. There is no law precluding someone from taking pictures where they are legally allowed to be. It's funny how people make statements like that when they really don't know what they are talking about.

July 6, 2008 3:26 AM

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