Today, news feeds flooded with stories of Marvel being at risk of losing rights to Spider-Man, Iron Man and other Avengers due to a termination notice filed on behalf of several Marvel Comics creator's heirs. The termination notice was filed by Marc Toberoff and he represents Larry Lieber, the brother of Stan Lee and a co-creator of Thor, Iron Man, and Ant Man; as well as the estates of Steve Ditko (Spiderman, Dr. Strange), Don Heck (Iron Man, Black Widow, Hawkeye), Don Rico (Black Widow), and Gene Colan (Captain Marvel, Falcon, Blade). The termination notice argues that the Marvel authors’ work led to multi-billion dollar franchises, and that their heirs should be allowed to share in the wealth and they should have the rights to the characters.
If they were to win this claim, the rights to these characters would go to the heirs filing the termination notice and Marvel would no longer be able to make comics or movies based off of these characters, and this is what has everyone freaking out. However, there is no need to panic because, this has happened in the past before, and Marvel has come out on top.
Marvel argues that the characters were created under “work for hire” arrangements, and that the heirs have no valid claim to the copyrights. Basically stating, that these creators were hired to create these characters for Marvel. And that's exactly what they did. They created many characters that we know and love but they did so for the company, Marvel.
This happened in a previous case involving the heirs of Jack Kirby. His heirs filed the same suit, in which the federal courts sided with Marvel, finding that the characters were made under work-for-hire arrangements.
And now Marvel's attorney, Daniel Petrocell, is stating that this is the same case. He states “Since these were works made for hire and thus owned by Marvel, we filed these lawsuits to confirm that the termination notices are invalid and of no legal effect.”
The court ruled in favor of Marvel before, and since the law has not changed, they will most likely ruled in favor of them again.
This means that Marvel is almost certain to retain the rights to Spider-Man, Iron Man and the other characters the suit is claiming.
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