Disney might have to fight to keep Marvel heroes

And you thought Disney’s recent purchase or Marvel meant the House of Mouse would get to keep all of Spider-man’s amazing friends. Heirs to several of the Marvel characters are suing Disney to make certain they recover rights to their parent’s creations.

The children of deceased artist Jack Kirby have reportedly filed 45 notices of termination of copyright. If successful, they would acquire their father’s share of copyrights on characters including the Fantastic Four, Hulk and X-Men, retaining the rights for several years before the characters become public.

If they win the suit, they would get a share of profits from anything involving those characters and could even sell the rights. Heck, they could even sell them to Disney. According to Guardian, “The new claims have implications for a large number of media companies, including Sony Pictures, which owns film rights to Spider-Man, Universal, which has distribution rights to Hulk films, and 20th Century Fox, which owns film rights to the Fantastic Four and X-Men.”

Read [Guardian] Read [Gamertell]