Variety reports that Warner Bros. has scored another win in their on-going legal battle with the estates of Superman co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster over control of rights to the character. Here's an excerpt from the article:

In a ruling issued Tuesday, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied an effort by attorney Marc Toberoff, who reps the Siegel and Shuster heirs, to assert attorney-client privilege over documents that DC Comics claims are key to the litigation involving control of the famed superhero.

The three-judge panel ruled unanimously that Toberoff cannot assert the privilege because he had already disclosed the documents to the government as part of its criminal investigation of a lawyer, David Michaels, who briefly worked for Toberoff "before absconding with copies of several documents from the Siegel and Shuster files," the ruling states.

The documents in question are a letter and other materials that Michaels sent to execs at DC Comics in an effort to "detail Toberoff's alleged master plan to capture Superman for himself," the ruling states. DC Comics execs gave the material to an outside attorney but then sought to obtain them as evidence through discovery motions in two other ongoing Superman cases.

Read the complete article at Variety.com.

This is the latest victory for the studio in a brutal decade-long fight.

The Siegel and Shuster estates have been largely successful in terminating copyright grants over their early work, which includes some of Superman’s defining characteristics, such as his costume, Clark Kent and his origin story.