Stan Lee Media, which claims to control the rights to Marvel characters, is suing the Walt Disney Co. and seeking “billions of dollars of profits.” The company claims that Stan Lee, who created many Marvel characters, gave it rights to those characters in 1998, before assigning those same rights to Marvel Enterprises a month later. Disney bought Marvel Enterprises in 2009 for $4.3 billion and proceeded to make a number of hit movies. The Avengers alone grossed more than $1.5 billion at the box office this summer. Walt Disney said in a statement, “This lawsuit is without merit. It arises out of the same core facts and legal claims that have been rejected by three federal district court judges.”
