Subscribe
HipHopWired Featured Video
CLOSE

An ultimate plot twist in the Ghostface Killah Ironman lawsuit has been thrown into mix, making the Wu-Tang Clan a winner when he’s actually still losing.

Last December, the Wallybee Champ lost a ruling to “Iron Man Theme” when a judge decided that Jack Urbont’s copyrights had be infringed on. Turns out, those copyrights didn’t even belong to him.

Via The Hollywood Reporter:

On Monday, a New York federal judge granted summary judgment to defendant Sony Music over Jack Urbont’s claims that Ghostface Killah sampled the “Iron Man Theme” on two tracks of the rapper’s second album, Supreme Clientele. In ruling in Sony’s favor, U.S. District Court judge Naomi Reice Buchwald examined how Marvel’s Stan Lee set up Urbont to create music for the 1960s television show The Marvel Super Heroes. She determined that Urbont contributed his materials as a “work made for hire,” meaning that Marvel really owns the work and Urbont had no standing to claim an illegal sample. Sony is the beneficiary of this determination, but the opinion steps on controversial territory and might set off a flurry of amicus briefs should Urbont take the matter to a higher authority.

Sony wasn’t a party to Marvel’s relationship with Urbont, and yet the judge allows the music company to challenge ownership anyway. As Urbont’s lawyer put it in a motion brief, “It is outrageous for Sony to claim that the Works are works for hire, when the supposed employer does not itself claim that the Works are works for hire.”

Nevertheless, the judge gives Sony standing to argue that “Iron Man Theme” is a work for hire, and once she does, Buchwald applies the same “instance and expense” test that became the focus of an attempted Supreme Court review in the Kirby case. She liberally quotes the 2nd Circuit’s language in Kirby in guiding her analysis.

Eventually, she concludes that “the Iron Man Composition was created at Marvel’s instance because it was developed to Marvel’s specifications and for Marvel’s approval. As in Kirby, Urbont’s compositions ‘were hardly self-directed projects in which he hoped Marvel, as one of several potential publishers, might have an interest…'”

She writes that Marvel retained a right to direct Urbont’s work and that the composition “was created at Marvel’s expense because Urbont was paid the fixed sum of $3,000 for his work.

In other words, Urbont didn’t have his affairs in order and got f*cked for his publishing. He recently submitted a motion for reconsideration.

Photo: Johnny Louis/WENN.com