In a move sure to surprise no-one, the Walt Disney Company have gotten involved in the ongoing legal battle between the heirs of Jack Kirby and recent Disney purchase Marvel Entertainment over the rights to the many characters that Kirby created for the publisher, including the X-Men, Iron Man, the Hulk and many more.
On Monday, lawyers acting on behalf of Disney filed a memorandum supporting Marvel’s countersuit against Kirby’s heirs (which, in turn, led to the Kirby family suing both Marvel and Disney in March for copyright termination on a host of Kirby’s creations), stating that the Kirby family’s claims should be dismissed as redundant, and containing “vague and baseless accusations” against Marvel. Interesting enough, the memo skirts the issue of Kirby’s creation of the characters, stating only that “[b]etween 1958 and 1963, Kirby contributed to numerous well-known Marvel comic book stories, including ‘The Fantastic Four,’ ‘X-Men,’ ‘Iron Man,’ ‘Spider-Man,’ and ‘The Incredible Hulk,’ among others.”
The full 22 page memorandum can be found here.
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