Stan Lee Media Inc. Loses Final Attempt At Comic Book Hero Copyright Ownership by Drew Sherman On December 23, 2014, the 10th Circuit of the Federal Court of Appeals followed suit with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision in October of 2014 and finally, for the most part, ended a protracted litigation strategy by Stan Lee Media Inc., a Denver based company that once had been owned by Stan Lee, to recover monies and ownership rights in certain Stan Lee created characters like the Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Spider Man from Marvel, Disney, and Stan Lee himself by ruling that Stan Lee Media Inc. was precluded from prosecuting their claims against Disney and Stan Lee as they previously had a full and fair opportunity to litigate its claims before the 9th Circuit. Stan Lee Media Inc. claimed that Stan Lee assigned the copyrights in the comic book heroes to SLM in 1998, one month before Stan Lee had signed a deal with Marvel for those same characters. The 9th Circuit had ruled in October that SLMs claims were denied at the pleading stage because, as the 9th Circuit Court found, SLMs assertion of ownership in the copyrights were simply implausible given its failure to once claim it owned the rights to the valuable characters, or the failure to publicize, protect, or exploit its right to profit on these copyrights between 1998, when the company says Stan Lee assigned the company rights to the characters, and 2007, when it filed suit. Therefore, once SLMs appeal came before the 10th Circuit, claiming that it had not had the opportunity to a full and fair litigation on the issues of copyright transfer and ownership, the 10th Circuit ruled that its arguments before the District Court and Court of Appeals in the 9th Circuit provided SLM with such a full and fair litigation opportunity on those issues. Though the rulings of the 9th and 10th Circuits lie in procedural arguments, the lessons to be learned from these series of cases is: 1. A supposed copyright assignee should not lie in wait on a copyright claim until it feels that there is a deep pocket at the end of the rainbow; incidents of ownership and enforcement (marketing, protections, licensing, etc.) are necessary to evidence a right and claim to ownership; and 2. A litigation strategy being employed over multiple jurisdictions with multiple defendants should be cohesive, cogent, and synergistic as a plaintiff does not want to be denied at the pleading stage due to res judicata or collateral estoppel. Adli Law Group, PC, specializes in dealing with such issues for copyright plaintiffs and defendants. Contact us for a consultation to avoid these same pitfalls. Adli Law is a boutique law firm specializing in Intellectual Property, Business, Real Estate, Products Liability and Labor and Employment Law. We are located in the heart of the Business District in downtown Los Angeles with satellite offices in Dallas, London, Tokyo and Taipei.
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 23:22:36 +0000
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