Marvel sues families of people who created Avengers characters

Disney has another lawsuit on its hands by the way of Marvel again, but this time it’s Disney that’s pursuing legal action against a Marvel icon, not the other way around.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Marvel and Disney are suing the estates of former Marvel employees Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and Gene Colan in order to keep the rights to the characters they created while working for the company. This is because the heirs of those Marvel titans are filing copyright termination notices in those characters, claiming that they’ve waited a statutorily mandated period of time. Disney, on the other hand, is arguing that its copyrights in these characters cannot be terminated because they were made under work-for-hire agreements.

For example, Steve Ditko’s estate recently filed a notice of termination for the character of Spider-Man, which Ditko created with Stan Lee way back in 1962. Under current copyright law, Marvel’s period of ownership for the character is set to end in 2023. It’s becoming a game of Tug-of-War to see who will get to control the fates of these characters. Characters like Iron Man, Thor, and Doctor Strange may also be affected, but even if Disney loses control, it won’t necessarily be the end of the world for Marvel or the MCU.

Marvel trying to keep hold of rights to Spider-Man, Iron Man and more

Even if some ownership rights revert to the heirs of the original creators, Disney and Marvel would not be giving away full control of those characters. They would still have a partial stake in them as co-owners. But that also means they will have to split profits with the other owners of the characters. And sharing profits is not something that mega-corporations traditionally want to do, hence the lawsuits. Also, this would only apply to character usage in the U.S., meaning anything in the international market would still be all Disney.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a case like this. DC Comics won a legal battle in 2013 against the heirs of Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster. And Marvel and Jack Kirby’s heirs settled a rights dispute over Kirby’s characters (who include the Fantastic Four, Captain America and the Hulk) only days before the case was headed to the Supreme Court.

So there’s no telling where these new cases will head. The Superman case came out in favor of DC. But Marvel settled with Kirby’s heirs before the Supreme Court was able to reach a final ruling.

Between this and Scarlett Johansson suing Disney over the release of Black Widow, the company has been in the legal spotlight lately. These new cases don’t make for a great look, so we’ll see if they try to save face in the coming weeks or months.

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