Stan Lee, chairman of Marvel Entertainment, filed a major lawsuit against POW! Entertainment with charges against stealing his name for financial benefit. Stan Lee had co-founded POW! Entertainment back in 2001 alongside Shane Duffy and Gill Champion, and is now filing a billion-dollar lawsuit against his former company.
As of May 2018, CNBC has acquired the 1 Billion USD lawsuit which alleges that the defendants have used Stan Lee’s likeness to sell POW! Entertainment to Hong Kong based Camsing International Holding Limited back in May 2017. Lee claimed that his fellow co-founders had “forged or fraudulently obtained” his signature to gain illegal rights to the usage of his name anytime. Stan Lee also declared that he had once signed a document which he believed to be a different contract, and due to his poor eyesight, failed to realize that he signed a document giving away his naming rights to the defendants.
When he had first formed POW!, it was intended to be a mere holding company for his vast property used for comics and animation. However, in 2017, Camsing International had acquired the company at an undisclosed price and made co-founders Shane Duffy and Gill Champion the CEO and President of the company respectively. Camsing then gained exclusive rights to the company and POW! Entertainment acquired Stan Lee’s social media accounts. In his lawsuit, Stan Lee protests that he had signed a document for non-exclusive rights to his name for the defendants, but it was ultimately being used for exclusive rights. Thus, Lee decided to sue the company for 1 Billion USD for damages and demanded the exclusive rights to be negated at the earliest notice.