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I'm a comic researcher, seeking court records from 1947 in the United States related to Superman's copyright case. While there's a Wikipedia entry on this case, I couldn't locate the crucial court judgment in legal databases. I found records from approximately 30 years later that reference the 1947 case, but how can I access the original records?

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You have a case name and number: Jerome Siegel and Joseph Shuster v. National Comics Publications Inc. et al., No. 1099-1947 (N.Y.Sup.Ct. 1947).

That indicates that you should look for a New York Supreme Court (which is the general NY trial court) judgment. The case is not digitally archived and therefore not accessible at the case search - the system only goes back to 2003.

So you need to go to the physical archive itself, either to request the clerk to pull a copy of that exact case for a fee, or to inspect the case file during business hours - if the file can be located and still exists. The rules for retrieving such a judgment can be found at NYCourts.gov.

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  • THX! I found it when I searched, but the style is just the original documents pasted as they are. If possible, I would prefer it in a text format, and for free. Are there any other recommended free case law databases besides this one?
    – enjin2000
    Commented Jun 30 at 3:21
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    @enjin2000 often enough, you can run a free OCR on the image files.
    – Trish
    Commented 2 days ago
  • I was just going to say, if you do get your hands on the original papers, try to take some snaps of the paperwork :-)
    – Richard
    Commented 2 days ago

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