According to the foreign media “Hollywood Reporter”, Marvel is using litigation to ensure that it retains the ownership of many comic characters including Iron Man, Spiderman, and Black Widow.
It is understood that this lawsuit was filed against descendants of late cartoonists such as Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Eugene Colan and others.
Last month, Steve Ditko’s estate administrator sent a notice of termination of the Spider-Man role to the Copyright Office.
According to the expiration clause of the copyright law, the author and his heirs can withdraw the copyright from the publisher and terminate the authorization after a certain statutory period.
The termination notice stated that Marvel will lose ownership of this classic character in June 2023.
In this regard, the lawsuit filed by Marvel stated that comic creators are employees of the company, and there is no “copyright termination” for these roles.
It is understood that there are as many as dozens of such notifications.
Stan Lee’s younger brother Larry Lieber issued a notice of termination in May of this year.
If Marvel loses the lawsuit, it will lose the ownership of billions of characters.
Although comic creators have created valuable characters, their treatment is not as good as outsiders think.
According to reports, after Dietko’s death in 2018, his estate was only $1.3 million.
Earlier, Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting, the creators of the “Captain America” comic book series, expressed similar frustrations about compensation.
Their creation can only be appreciated in the movie’s credits, and there is not much movie box office and peripheral revenue sharing.
