Three months after suing The Walt Disney Co. in a dispute over royalties, Marvel Enterprises Inc. wants to take the copyrights to Marvel superheroes away from the Mouse House, reports REUTERS. In a suit filed on Oct. 29, 2004 in Los Angeles federal court, Marvel requests a judge to declare that Disney never legally assumed copyrights to Marvel characters when it bought the original licensee, Fox Family Worldwide, in 2001.
In July, Marvel sued Disney for more than $55 million in royalties owed from animated programming starring Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, X-Men and other superheroes. Since then, Marvel claims that it discovered it did not approve the rights switch to Disney from Fox.
"As we got further into the analysis of the underlying agreements with respect to first lawsuit, the more apparent it became that Disney never properly got the rights in the first place," said Marvel's attorney Carole Handler.
A Disney spokesman said the company had not seen the lawsuit and had no comment.
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