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1 October 2019CopyrightRory O'Neill

Stan Lee’s daughter sues over ‘fraudulent’ IP deal

The daughter of the late comic book author Stan Lee, who created characters including Spiderman and Captain America, is suing a company she says fraudulently obtained his IP rights.

The defendant POW! Entertainment, which Lee co-founded in 2001, has dismissed the suit as “truly nothing more than family drama”.

Lee’s IP rights have been the subject of complex legal wrangling and accusations of impropriety in recent years.

Before his death, the comic book author filed a lawsuit of his own against POW! Entertainment, a company he co-founded in 2001, over its acquisition by parent company Hong Kong-based Camsing International.

Lee claimed that he had never agreed to the deal, nor had he ever knowingly signed an exclusive licence to his IP and likeness with POW!.

The suit was dropped in July 2018, with a statement attributed to Lee commenting: "I am thrilled to put the lawsuit behind me, get back to business with my friends and colleagues at POW! and launch the next wave of amazing characters and stories!”

Now, his daughter JC Lee has picked up the baton and is attempting to win control of Lee’s IP rights from POW! and its Hong Kong parent company.

According to the latest suit, filed at the US District Court for the Central District of California last Thursday, September 26, Lee was misled into assigning his IP rights to POW! Entertainment by his “trusted partners” in 2001.

JC Lee, claimed that only after her father’s death late last year did she learn the extent to which his IP had been “looted, muddied, and entangled by POW!”.

In the suit, she claimed Lee’s IP rights remain the property of Stan Lee Media, a company established by the author after his departure from Marvel in 1998.

Stan Lee Media filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2001, after which Lee and his partners formed POW!.

JC Lee claims that the author’s partners engineered the company’s bankruptcy in order to “loot” its IP assets, which Lee subsequently assigned to POW!.

“Between 2001- 2017, they misled Stan into believing that he could and should reassign those rights to POW! Entertainment on no less than six occasions, each based on convincing Stan he had retained rights that he had in fact validly assigned to Stan Lee [Media],” the complaint said.

In response to the suit, POW! provided a statement to Comicbook.com which dismissed the accusations as “nothing more than a perverse publicity stunt”.

“What is truly saddening for those at POW!, many of whom have been Stan’s closest confidants, friends, and business associates for so many years, is to see his estranged daughter using Stan’s name in such a brazen and transparent effort to gain media attention and extract some financial settlement,” the statement said.

POW! said it was “more than confident that this case will be promptly disposed of by the courts”.

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More on this story

article
16 May 2018   Comic book creator Stan Lee has gone to war against POW Entertainment, claiming that executives in the company he co-founded conspired to “steal” his name and likeness.
article
10 July 2018   Comic book creator Stan Lee has dropped a $1 billion lawsuit against his former company over claims that executives at POW Entertainment had conspired to “steal” his name and likeness.