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The company Stan Lee founded is now battling Stan Lee’s daughter and heir for control over his extremely valuable name, likeness and ideas.
Weird as it might sound … Stan Lee Entertainment is suing Joan Celia Lee, claiming she’s trying to cash in on her dad when she has no legal right to do so — even though she’s the sole heir to his fortune.
According to docs, the company Stan founded in 1998 — as an animation publishing and entertainment company — was assigned rights to his name, likeness, ideas, characters, stories, logos, etc. Basically, if Stan thought it … SLE owns it … according to the company.
However, SLE claims since the big cheese died in 2018, Joan’s failed to protect SLE’s legal hold on its right to Stan’s intellectual property. Specifically, in the suit, SLE calls out POW! Entertainment for interloping … trying to “loot SLE’s intellectual property.”
SLE is looking for Joan to play Captain America or Iron Man, and save the day. In its suit, the company says as trustee for the Lee Family Survivor’s Trust … Joan has a “duty to vindicate the rights” of SLE against villains like POW!
Stan’s co. wants the court to force Joan to hold up her end of the bargain, and defend SLE against all evildoers — or as the lawsuit puts it … POW! and other entities trying to jack Stan’s valuable ideas.
It also wants a declaration that SLE is the rightful owner of Stan’s creations.
We’ve reached out Joan … so far, no word back.