Copyright case: Bennett v. Walt Disney Co., USA

Allegations against Marvel and one of its top writers fail for the second time.

Action-adventure characters from the Captain America and Spider-Man franchises were not unlawfully copied from the self-published comic book series of a relatively unknown author, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has held. The court, in affirming an Atlanta court’s decision to dismiss the author’s pro se complaint, puts an apparent end—at least for now—to the author’s quixotic effort to collect a billion-dollar payday from the Disney-owned Marvel brand and one of its top writers (Bennett v. Walt Disney Co., No. 23-12786 (11th Cir. Sept. 4, 2024)).

Case date: 04 September 2024

Case number: No. 23-12786.

Court: United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit

A full summary of this case has been published on Kluwer IP Law