news.muckety.com — Marvel Comics’ transformation from a bankrupt company with a dusty library of 5,000 superheroes in 1998 into a booming entertainment conglomerate that produced its first self-made movies this year was a real-life metamorphosis.
Jul 8, 2008 View in Crawl 4
inqwizitorJul 8, 2008
The facts are a little skewed by the writer here- Stan Lee effectively sold his rights to all the Intellectual Property he ever created, owned or had claims to, including the exclusive rights to his name and likeness to his namesake dot com company Stan Lee Media when he founded it in October, 1998. In August, 1998. when Marvel's new owners at Toy Biz used Marvel's bankruptcy to economize by voiding Lee's lifetime, exclusive $1mm a year contract (and rights assignment) Lee for the first time in his lifetime career with Marvel had the freedom to do whatever he wanted to do, and had reverted to him (by the ignorance and parsimoniousness of the new owner of Marvel, Issac Perlmutter) all rights to whatever he created during his career. Lee decided with his best friend at the time, lawyer-entrepreneur Peter Paul, to put everything he had into his new dot com, Stan Lee Media in exchange for controlling interest in the stock in the company (worth between $10 million when he was issued the stock- to $100 million when the stock was trading at $30 a share in February 2000) .But Stan also wanted his $1mm a year salary from Marvel for life, so in November 1998- he entered into a new lifetime NON-EXCLUSIVE agreement where he agreed to spend 10% of his time working for Marvel, while they agreed that he could spend 90% of his time competing with them using his Marvel creations to promote his new company.The problem is he also agreed to assign everything in the creative universe he ever created to Marvel- 30 days after he had given everything tp Stan Lee Media, and he WARRANTED to Marvel in Par 5 that he never made any other assignments to anyone else.He effectively defrauded Marvel by warranting he was giving them rights he no longer owned.Marvel knew of lee's earlier assignment but didnt want to sue Stan, so they hid his agreement, the largest employment agreement Marvel had, from Marvel shareholders from 1998- 2002 when Stan sued under the agreement Marvel lawyers knew was fraudulent- by then Stan lee had put Stan Lee Media under his complete control in Chapter 11Bankruptcy "protection"- hid his assignment that was published in SLM's 10K with the SEC in 2000 but then omitted from all Bankruptcy pleadings- and conspired with Marvel to take $14 million in a settlement sealed by the court, to hide his rights and his assignment to SLM.Dont believe a word of this! look at www.stanleemedia.net and the documents posted