Posted on 02/01/2013 8:14:02 PM PST by doug from upland
For the last few years Michael Wolk has quietly worked to advance the multi-billion dollar copyright infringement lawsuit that claims Walt Disney Co. does not own the rights to iconic Stan Lee-created superhero characters it acquired from Marvel Entertainment, like Spider-Man, X-Men, The Incredible Hulk and The Fantastic Four. Before Wolk got involved, the minority shareholders of a company Lee founded in the 1990s had for a long time unsuccessfully litigated over these characters, but Wolk has not been dissuaded.
“We are in the right here,” says Wolk in an interview. “No court has ever addressed or ever decided who is the owner of the characters—all of the prior litigation got dismissed for reasons that have nothing to do with who owns the characters.”
Wolk is not a shareholder of Stan Lee Media, which spent the years 2001 to 2006 in bankruptcy court, nor is he a lawyer in the case. Rather Wolk is an investor who has organized a small group to financially back Stan Lee Media’s legal claims that it owns these iconic characters. Wolk says his primary investor is one of the nation’s biggest hedge funds, billionaire Paul Singer’s Elliott Management. “Elliott Capital hedge fund has been providing financial support to help [Stan Lee Media] since 2011,” says Wolk.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
I think Walt Disney was hoping to hold out for Stan Lee’s death. The man is about 90 years of age.
Hasn’t Disney gotten into other similar scuffs too, like over Winnie the Pooh?
Aw man. And here I was hoping for a Donald Duck/Howard The Duck crossover.
If Stan Lee is so sure that Disney stole the Avengers, why did he appear in the Avenger’s movie? Doesn’t his participation in the movie tend to undercut his argument that the movie was made illegally?
Reading the article, it appears that Stan Lee is not really part of this any more.
google “Stan Lee Hillary Clinton”
I worked with Lee on a project here in L.A. and our legal team found out he still has a percentage involved in each movie and character that he created. It’s small but enough to have a voice. Told us many times he felt saddened how his buddy Joe Shuster who created Superman lost the rights to his own creation and he didn;t want to end up like him. Then again, he’s a flaming lib but he’s OK to talk to rationally about politics.
Stan Lee Media was caught up in Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign finance scandal, and was left broke after getting fleeced by the Clinton's.
I rrecall that Hillary's finance manager eventually took the fall.
-PJ
Stan Lee Media is the plaintiff, not Stan.
David Rosen, Hillary’s campaign manager, did not take a fall. He was acquitted in what appeared to be a fixed trial. I was there as well as the case of Peter Paul v Hillary.
I wrote extensively about how Clinton and his corrupt business partner, Jim Levin (from Chicago, naturally), stole Stan Lee Media’s major Japanese business partner and ultimately led to the collapse of the company.
The story is told in our film, HILLARY! UNCENSORED. (I still have some copies if anyone is interested.)
Jack Kirby’s estate and Steve Ditko should have a say too.
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