Stan Lee has been about the money before anything for a very, very long time. Don't forget Stan has been involved in a lot of wierd legal manuvering over the years, so it's not surprising that some of this is coming back to haunt him.
To be honest, I think a lot of people are backing Stan in cases like this because of who he is. Sort of like how George Lucas sold the rights to "Star Wars" on multiple occasions, thinking he was done with it. Both to see a set of "young adult" books written as sequels ("Prophets Of The Dark Side", "The Glove Of Darth Vader", etc...), and more famously to Dark Horse comics which turned into a massive legal battle. George Lucas getting the rights back largely because he was the iconic father of the franchise, and I think his star power overshadowed the law in a lot of his dealings. As much as I hate to admit it, I think Stan Lee can be seen in a very similar light. I love the guy, but I'm not sure I'd want to do business with him, especially not on a large scale.
As far as why Marvel and Disney are not involved in the suit, I believe it's part of a strategy. There is probably every intent of going after them, but it's easier to go after the big boys once you have precedent in your favor. They win against the smaller companies, then they can point to those resolutions when making the same arguement against the bigger ones. This can greatly hamper what those high powered lawyers can do, because it limits their abillity to manuver. Precedent being VERY powerful in the US legal system, especially recent precedent.
On the other hand, I'll point out that in the end everyone is going to have to play together nicely or else they are going to lose everything. Simply put the marvel characters are popular because of a shared continuity, and while Stan Lee created a lot of characters he's not the only one writing Marvel. You break up that continuity your going to wind up with weaker properties as a whole, and the destruction of the shared universe people have been spending money on. It serves nobody's interests for this to go too far.
It's also noteworthy that the Marvel liscence has been a huge mess for a while. Consider that Disney owns Marvel, but at the same time their biggest rival theme park: Universal Studios, has the rights to Marvel as far as parks go and has an entire "Island Of Adventure" set up for it. Disney is hardly all powerful with that liscence and was unable to get that agreement overturned, and I believe they did feel it out.
It's a mess, but honestly I don't think how it turns out will actually affect the fans much, all that it's going to influance is how the money flows behind the scenes.
To be honest, I think a lot of people are backing Stan in cases like this because of who he is. Sort of like how George Lucas sold the rights to "Star Wars" on multiple occasions, thinking he was done with it. Both to see a set of "young adult" books written as sequels ("Prophets Of The Dark Side", "The Glove Of Darth Vader", etc...), and more famously to Dark Horse comics which turned into a massive legal battle. George Lucas getting the rights back largely because he was the iconic father of the franchise, and I think his star power overshadowed the law in a lot of his dealings. As much as I hate to admit it, I think Stan Lee can be seen in a very similar light. I love the guy, but I'm not sure I'd want to do business with him, especially not on a large scale.
As far as why Marvel and Disney are not involved in the suit, I believe it's part of a strategy. There is probably every intent of going after them, but it's easier to go after the big boys once you have precedent in your favor. They win against the smaller companies, then they can point to those resolutions when making the same arguement against the bigger ones. This can greatly hamper what those high powered lawyers can do, because it limits their abillity to manuver. Precedent being VERY powerful in the US legal system, especially recent precedent.
On the other hand, I'll point out that in the end everyone is going to have to play together nicely or else they are going to lose everything. Simply put the marvel characters are popular because of a shared continuity, and while Stan Lee created a lot of characters he's not the only one writing Marvel. You break up that continuity your going to wind up with weaker properties as a whole, and the destruction of the shared universe people have been spending money on. It serves nobody's interests for this to go too far.
It's also noteworthy that the Marvel liscence has been a huge mess for a while. Consider that Disney owns Marvel, but at the same time their biggest rival theme park: Universal Studios, has the rights to Marvel as far as parks go and has an entire "Island Of Adventure" set up for it. Disney is hardly all powerful with that liscence and was unable to get that agreement overturned, and I believe they did feel it out.
It's a mess, but honestly I don't think how it turns out will actually affect the fans much, all that it's going to influance is how the money flows behind the scenes.