A most interesting report on Reuters, as the legal motion of an independent UK publisher has led to cancellation of something the Big Two shouldn’t have been hogging all for themselves:
A U.S. Trademark Office tribunal has canceled a set of “Super Hero” trademarks jointly owned by comic giants Marvel and DC at the request of a London-based comic book artist, according to a Thursday order.
The USPTO’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board ruled for S.J. Richold’s Superbabies Ltd, after Disney’s Marvel and Warner Bros’ DC did not file an answer to Superbabies’ request to invalidate the marks.
Spokespeople and attorneys for Marvel and DC did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Superbabies attorney Adam Adler of Reichman Jorgensen Lehman & Feldberg said in a statement that the ruling was “not just a win for our client but a victory for creativity and innovation.”
“By establishing SUPER HEROES’ place in the public domain, we safeguard it as a symbol of heroism available to all storytellers,” Adler said.
Rivals Marvel and DC jointly own four federal trademarks covering the terms “Super Hero” and “Super Heroes,” the oldest of which dates back to 1967.
Richold writes comics featuring a team of super-hero babies called the Super Babies. According to Richold, DC accused his company of infringing the “Super Hero” marks and threatened legal action after Superbabies Ltd applied for U.S. trademarks covering the “Super Babies” name.
Marvel and DC have cited their marks in opposing dozens of superhero-related trademark applications at the USPTO, according to the office’s records.
Superbabies petitioned the office to cancel the marks in May. It argued that Marvel and DC cannot “claim ownership over an entire genre” with their trademarks, and that the two competitors cannot own trademarks together.
Amazing. It’s about time the trademark was abandoned, and actually surprising in a sense that after all these years, Marvel/DC decided not to oppose efforts to remove it as a barrier to other writers and artists. Maybe they realize that, with their own sales tanking as a result of their woke directions, it does no good to make a bad situation worse and cause resentment. This ruling is a huge relief.
The Verge also noted:
If you want to dive down a rabbit hole on the subject of Marvel and DC’s super hero-related trademarks, I’ve got just the thing. One of the lawyers involved in the Superbabies trademark challenge, Adam Adler, actually wrote up a two-part series of articles for Escapist Magazine lightly explaining how the companies came to jointly own the trademarks and what they’ve done to guard that ownership over the years. Adler links out to other articles with even deeper dives, too.
No doubt, some of the most famous people working at both publishers have to shoulder blame for leading to a situation that was uncalled for as well. For all we know, creator-owned comics like Nexus probably encountered the same problems too in some way or other. Now, they needn’t worry about it any longer.
And in the end, if DC/Marvel won’t abandon their woke directions, that’s just one more reason why it’s time for them to retire their publications, and let other, more responsible creators take the reins in writing/drawing superhero fare, even though the whole superhero genre has been run into the ground over the past few decades.
Originally published here.
English (US) · 