Marvel Could Lose Rights to Spider-Man, Iron Man and Other Major Characters

After sending off the Avengers in a once-in-a-decade fight off on screen, Marvel is gearing up for an off-line battle to retain them.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Marvel is filing five lawsuits to sue its biggest-earning superheroes’ creators in a bid to retain their copyrights.

These copyright claims include Spider-Man, Iron Man, Ant-Man, Thor, Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel, Hawkeye, Black Widow, and more.

The battle over copyrights between a creator and their publisher has always been difficult. And it now has taken over the mage-franchise, Marvel Studios again, but with the potential of losing out on multiple super-grossing characters.

So how did this all start?

The face-off started in August 2021, when the estate of former Marvel creator Steve Ditko filed a notice of termination for Spider-Man rights. Ditko is the artist and the co-creator of the original Spider-Man comics. If the lawsuit is successful, Marvel will have to give up the Spider-Man rights as early as June 2023.

As per the termination rights under the current U.S. copyright law, creators or their heirs/estate can reclaim the rights given to the publishers after a period of time. This ‘period’ usually lasts up to several decades.

The problem is that not just Spider-Man, but plenty of other Avengers’ will have their statutory period up in some time.

As a preventive measure, Marvel has filed five lawsuits against other reputable creators’ estates too, such as Stan Lee and Gene Colan.

Marvel seeks to argue that these celebrated characters were “created as work for hire” and hence, can’t be transferred back to the creators through termination.

With great company also comes impeccably intelligent lawyers. As Screenrant explains it, in the era these characters were created, publishers were made the intellectual property owners by the creators through contracts. This is another significant point Marvel will use as it has done previously.

In a 2013 case against Jack Kirby for Spider-Man, Hulk and Thor, Marvel won the suit with the court ruling that the characters were created as work for hire, overthrowing Kirby’s request for termination.

Disney even won a multiple-year-long copyright lawsuit against creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster for the rights to D.C. Comic’s Superman in 2013.

The world has come to a full circle as Marc Toberoff, the representative for Kirby, now represents Ditko’s estate. And on Disney’s side, it’s Dan Petrocelli, the one who led the court victory for Superman.

While multiple past instances seem to suggest Marvel’s victory again, it’s not necessary that they will. Legal suits regarding the copyright claims, the money first issued, the termination rights, and more have many minute details that might make or break a lawsuit.

Now, with the potential of Marvel losing its biggest superheroes, they might win that but lose out on significant support from fans. Copyright lawsuits can be tricky, and a company may do whatever it takes to retain its money-grossing stars.

With the Black Widow lawsuit bringing in negative P.R. and multiple criticisms, here’s hoping the case ends on a better note both for creators and the company.

Source: Screenrant