Marvel Settles Legal Battle For Spider-Man & Doctor Strange Rights

Marvel has settled a lawsuit for the rights to Spider-Man and Doctor Strange with Steve Ditko's estate.

By Kofi Outlaw

Marvel has reached a settlement agreement in a legal battle over the right to franchise characters Spider-Man and Doctor Strange.

 In a new report about the case, it's being said that Marvel managed to come to terms with attorneys representing the company and estate of comic book creator and icon Steve Ditko this week, ending a wider net of legal challenges going back to 2021. The original case started with a back-and-forth battle between Marvel and the estates of late comic book creators Gene Colan, Steve Ditko, Don Heck, and Don Rico, with characters like Iron Man, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Hulk, Doctor Strange and other all in contention. 

In June of this year, most of the lawsuits were settled – except for the portion of it involving Ditko's estate. the final portion of the legal challenge continued, with Marvel being represented by Dan Petrocelli and Molly Lens of O'Melveny; the representative for Ditko's estate, Patrick Ditko, was represented by attorney Marc Toberoff. 

With this latest settlement, it seems that Marvel has finally cleared up the issues with its character rights in full. Ditko's estate had been holding out over rights to issues of Amazing Fantasy and Strange Tales – the two comic book titles that served as the first appearances of Spider-Man and Doctor Strange, respectively. No word on the terms that Marvel and Ditko's estate have agreed on, only that it is "an amicable settlement" and that we can expect "a stipulation of dismissal with prejudice to be filed in the coming weeks." 

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(Photo: Marvel)

There's been a lot of debate in the last few years about how Marvel has made its library of characters into bigger, and more profitable brands via the MCU movies and TV series, without the original comic creators being sharing in those profits. Like with the 2023 Actors' and Writers' Strikes, the central debate has been whether or not creative deals made in the pre-Internet era were still fair and valid when there are now so many other platforms and lanes of distribution for content – or in the case of comic creators, significantly more potential profits from their characters than they ever could've dreamed of. 

Going forward, it will be interesting to see if more comic book creators from different publishers all file similar suits, or if there is now some kind of equilibrium that's been established for the foreseeable future. 

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