Marvel & Disney Rights Case For Supreme Court To Decide Says Jack Kirby Estate

Just days before Captain America: The Winter Soldier opens, the heirs of Captain America, The Avengers and X-Men co-creator Jack Kirby are asking the Supreme Court to hand them back the rights to the comic legends’ work from Marvel and Disney. “The Court of Appeals unconstitutionally appropriated Kirby’s valuable copyrights and gave them outright to Marvel, effecting a transfer of wealth on a massive scale,” says the 39-page petition (read it here) filed with the High Court on March 21. The petition is the latest legal attempt by Lisa Kirby, Neal Kirby, Susan Kirby and Barbara Kirby to assert that they had the right in 2009 to issue termination notices to Marvel and others on the artist’s characters under the provisions of the 1976 Copyright Act. A response is due from Marvel and Disney on April 28.
The fact that the Kirby estate are petitioning the SCOTUS is a pretty clear sign that it hasn’t been a successful effort getting those rights so far. In October last year, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Kirby estate’s request for a rehearing or a full rehearing en banc. That followed an August 2013 denial by the appeals court of the heirs’ claims against Marvel and Disney by reaffirming a 2011 lower court ruling that the comic legend ... Read More »

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