COPYRIGHTS - Derivative rights in Stallone's Expendables franchise at stake?

HR reviews a possible estoppel issue here.

 In October 2011, writer Marcus Webb sued Nu Image, Stallone, Callaham and others, claiming that Expendables wasn't based onBarrow but rather on Webb's own mercenaries script titled The Cordoba Caper. In response, Stallone's lawyers -- in an apparent contradict­ion of the producers' argument in the Callaham case -- pointed out that Callaham's script predated Webb's and thus,Expendables was independently created. Stallone offered a sworn declaration that described how he liked Barrow and maintained its structure while writing a new version. "In those rewrites, I kept Callaham's story about a group of highly trained mercenaries overthrowing the dictator of a Latin America island," Stallone said.

The problem, of course, was that Nu Image already had tried to minimize Callaham's contributions. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff noticed the inconsistency, and in a December 2012 ruling, he slammed Stallone. "Indeed, the admission smacks more than a little of hypocrisy," the judge wrote. "Stallone previously asserted in a signed letter submitted in his [WGA arbitration] that although he read Barrow, he 'set it aside' and thatExpendables was 'an original … and doesn't use one word, one comma, one iota from [Barrow].' " Nonetheless, even after expressing reservations about Stallone's credibility, the judge found that Webb had failed to show that his work was "so strikingly similar" toExpendables "as to permit a reasonable juror to infer access."