The Four Color Media Monitor

Deadline reports the Disney corporation's settled a lawsuit filed by the Steve Ditko estate that sought to end the copyrights to 3 Marvel characters:

After more than two years, Disney and subsidiary Marvel have reached a settlement with the estate of acclaimed comic book artist Steve Ditko. Lawyers for the Mouse House and the Ditko estate filed court papers on December 6 that effectively ended the pricey dispute. A final affirmation of the settlement is expected in the coming weeks.

Represented by pugilistic copyright attorney Marc Toberoff, the Ditko estate in 2021 had sought termination notices on the rights to such luminaries as Spider-Man, Doctor Strange and Iron Man. Other artists’ families and heirs also challenged the rights to characters created by their family members. Those disputes were resolved earlier this year.

As in previous settlements and resolutions that Disney/Marvel have reached with the likes of the Jack Kirby estate and others, the settlement with the Ditko estate is confidential. However, attorney Toberoff told Deadline that “the parties reached an amicable resolution of this interesting case.”

[...] The Copyright Act of 1976 allows heirs to pull the plug on licenses granted or transferred for a copyrighted work in particular situations with a fully executed notice — as the heirs and estates have tried to do here.

Important to note here: Marvel will not lose ownership of the lucrative characters if they came up short in court. The Disney-owned superhero giant would retain a co-ownership that would involve payouts to the other co-owners, among other requirements. Along with that profit sharing, regardless of what happens in the federal courts, these rights only apply to the United States, not elsewhere.

With the way Marvel's going these days - and lest we forget, DC too - it's a shame the estates of late veterans like Ditko couldn't wrest the copyrights away from them, or that they agreed to a residual settlement at all. Or maybe that they wouldn't start any kind of a boycott campaign if that's what could bring down the value of the copyrights, and considering how badly Marvel/DC collapsed in quality by the early 2000s, there's not bound to be much value in their comics publishing, that's for sure.

Eventually, the copyrights will expire, regardless, and become more public domain. But it's a shame how all these years, conglomerates really led to a sad situation that enabled abuse of the creations and properties, and now, here we are, in an era where wokeness has really humiliated the creations of people far better than the gatekeepers who've since taken over.

Labels: Doctor Strange, good artists, history, Iron Man, marvel comics, msm propaganda, Spider-Man