Stan Lee Media, Inc. – a former company of comic book legend Stan Lee – has filed a copyright infringement complaint against Disney over the rights to Lee’s Marvel Comics creations, including Spider-Man, X-Men and The Avengers, and are seeking to gain control of said properties, as well as a slice of the alleged $5.5 billion that Disney is said to have earned from the various movies and associated merchandising.
According to Deadline, SLMI are claiming that: “The Walt Disney Company has represented to the public that it, in fact, owns the copyright to these characters as well as to hundreds of other characters created by Stan Lee. Those representations made to the public by The Walt Disney Company are false.” It goes on to allege that “in November, 1998, Stan Lee signed a written agreement with Marvel Enterprises, Inc. in which he purportedly assigned to Marvel the rights to the Characters. However, Lee no longer owned those rights since they had been assigned to SLEI previously. Accordingly, the Marvel agreement actually assigned nothing.”
This isn’t the first time that Stan Lee Media have launched a lawsuit against Marvel Entertainment, with the company first attempting to seek co-ownership of Lee’s creations back in 2007. Over the last few years, several lawsuits have been thrown out by various courts, so it’s probably safe to assume this latest one will go the same way too…
Originally published October 10, 2012. Updated April 10, 2018.
