Not so fast, Time Warner’s lawyers say. In court papers, they allege that certain elements of the Superman story in Action Comics No. 1 were added by others in Detective Comics’ employ. The Siegels’ profit participation—if granted by the court—should be limited, the attorneys claim, because Superman has evolved during his seven decades on Earth, gaining powers such as X-ray vision that Siegel and Shuster never imagined. Moreover, the lawyers say, revenues from Superman materials sold outside the U.S., which Toberoff insists should be split with the Siegels, are off-limits. They also argue that the Siegels’ share applies only to DC Comics’ profits, not to all of Time Warner’s Superman-related income.

Most crucially, Time Warner’s lawyers allege, Action Comics No. 1 included material that Siegel and Shuster created at Detective Comics’ request. It therefore qualifies (at least partially) as what’s known as work for hire, which provides an exception to the general rule that the person who creates a work is its legally recognized author.

According to George Hedges, a specialist in entertainment law with the Los Angeles firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges, work for hire is the “cornerstone of the American entertainment industry.” This principle allows companies that employ creators to assert ownership in perpetuity over (and to alter and expand upon) what their employees have created. Creators, then, can make no termination claims.

“Without work for hire, there would be no Warner Bros., no nothing,” Hedges says. The Superman case is significant, he says, in part because of the “legal archaeology” that such claims require. It also promises to be a hard-fought rematch. Toberoff’s bout with Warner Bros. over The Dukes of Hazzard was, in Hedges’ view, a slam dunk.

“The judge basically told Warner, ‘You brought this on yourselves,’ ” Hedges says of the studio’s failure to secure the rights to Moonrunners, the earlier film, or to settle with its producers once that failure was discovered.

The lead in-house counsel in that case, Warner Bros. vice president Wayne Smith, is also heading up the Superman defense, which is why perusers of the case file—in which Toberoff calls Smith’s assertions “highly dubious” and Smith’s team accuses Toberoff of “slinging mud”—might get the impression that this is personal. Smith declined to comment on the bickering, saying, “The facts are what they are.” But when a reporter noted that Toberoff has had more clashes with Warner Bros. than with any other studio, Smith snapped, “There have been others, but he’s had no success against anyone else. He probably doesn’t talk much about that.”

While many in Hollywood slap Toberoff with the “ambulance chaser” moniker, he’s actually more like a patent troll.

Last year, Research in Motion, a Canadian company facing an injunction on BlackBerry sales, paid $613 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the holder of several patents related to the handheld device. That action was brought by a patent troll—an individual or firm that licenses and litigates patents in hopes of piggybacking on the success of comparable products developed by others. Similarly, Toberoff milks revenue out of intellectual properties created by others. He’s a copyright troll—and seemingly proud of it.

“Most people deal with I.P. [intellectual property] on a one-off basis,” Toberoff says. “I see it as a business in itself.” But to make that business pay, he faces several hurdles. First, he must rustle up clients, most of whom have no idea until they meet him that they may possess valuable rights. Second, because he works on contingency, he must sometimes invest hundreds of hours in cases that don’t pan out.

For example, last year he went after a company called Classic Media, seeking to terminate the grants of copyright for two of its properties: the 1945 film short Casper the Friendly Ghost and the novel Lassie Come Home. Classic Media’s lawyer, Bonnie Eskenazi of the Los Angeles firm Greenberg Glusker, beat Toberoff in both cases, winning judgments saying his clients had no valid claim. (Toberoff is appealing one of the Lassie judgments.) The cases cost Toberoff more than wasted time. A Pennsylvania judge ordered him to reimburse Eskenazi $2,581 for travel expenses.

Even when Toberoff succeeds at reclaiming the rights to a property, his payday doesn’t come until he finds a new way to exploit them. Buck Henry, the 76-year-old screenwriter who penned The Graduate, heard from Toberoff last year regarding Get Smart, the TV series about a bumbling secret agent that Henry and Mel Brooks wrote in 1965. Warner Bros. was working on a feature film (due out next year), and though Henry and Brooks had never previously asserted their rights as creators, Toberoff’s success with Fantasy Island made him suspect there was money to be made.