A Note From The Ghost Rider Co-Creator About Recent Court Ruling

Marvel wants $17,000 and is dragging this guy through hell. That is [frick]ing petty of Marvel

I saw this and had to post this....

Let's imagine we're Marvel. We have two problems, both caused by Gary Friedrich's suit.

For years, we've been turning a blind eye to creators selling prints and such of our characters. We do that with lots of folks. It's little or no money out of our pockets and it benefits people who've worked for us, most of whom we think well of. As long as we can plausibly say we don't know it's happening, we're not risking our copyrights and trademarks. (Bear in mind that failure to defend a trademark can result in loss of trademark: see this nice writeup by Bohen, Mathers and Associates, a law firm specializing in intellectual property.)

Then we get sued by Gary Friedrich. The whole matter goes to court (most suits don't), and it goes on for five years. Our defense costs are probably well up into the six figures. Eventually we win hands-down.

Should we ask for our legal costs? No way he has that kind of money, it'll bankrupt him, and we'll get nothing except further legal costs and bad press (insert blood from turnip phrase here). There's no way he can make us whole in any sense of the word.

Should we allow him to continue to profit off of us? No, we don't owe him any further consideration on that point. He's no longer one of our friends.

Further, in the course of the defense it comes out that he's been selling prints of our characters. Since it's now a matter of legal record, we have to take action to defend our trademark. So we formally forbid him future use of the characters, and ask for only for the $17,000 of his profits on the sales. No punitive damages.

Only $17,000? Yeah. It's big enough that the court will regard it as a real defense action of our trademark. It's small enough that he might be able to pay it. If he doesn't pay (probably because he can't without going further into the poorhouse), so long as he cuts out the shite we can not bother pursuing him to actually pay.

The legal paperwork says he's got to pay the judgement. But if he doesn't it's not worth the further expense to go after him (repeat blood from a turnip remark here). We don't want to bankrupt him; if we did, we'd have asked for punitive damages. But we're out a shiteload of time and money on this, and we don't want someone else with an equally dubious claim to come after us. Nor do we want him making any more money off our trademarks and characters. So we need to do something big enough to deter. Whether he actually pays us the $17,000 doesn't make a damn to our bottom line. It's the deterrent effect that we care about, both on him and others.

As long as he doesn't screw with us in the future, we're not gonna screw with him. But now there's this big sword hanging over his head. He screws with us again, we go back to court and ask for payment, back interest, and maybe punitive damages to boot. He spends most of his productive hours in court for years, then goes straight to bankruptcy. But that's the nuclear option, and we'd rather not do that. Instead, we create the bomb and make it obvious to him that he's the one with his finger on the trigger.

Then we walk quietly away.

IMHO, that's what we do if we're a smart Marvel. It's not a win-win, but it's the minimal lose-lose.