If this were about ownership of intellectual property, then why are we not hearing about a lawsuit against DC for challengers of the Unknown, the New Gods, Mr. Miracle, The Forlver People, Manhunter (golden or bronze age), Sandman (golden or Bronze age), The Demon, Kamndi, and Atlas?  I believe Time Warner now owns Thundarr the Barbarian also which Kirby had a hand in developing.

Why didn't the Kirby estate go after DC first? The terms of Kirby's deal with DC after he left Marvel are fairly well known. He wanted to be in control of the creative process, with little editorial oversight. His claim to ownership of those characters is far stronger. Winning these characters would likely have made for compelling legal precedent for the estate's case against Marvel. But they went after Marvel. Why?

While fans know Darkseid, Orion, Etigran, Rocky, Ace, et al., the world knows about the Hulk, the X-Men, and Spider-Man.  When is the Manhunter movie due to go into production? Is Warner Brothers going to make a movie about a bunch of space gods with a Shakespearean complex, when Marvel is aready making movies about space gods with a Shakespeaean complex and better name recognition? Can the Challengers (men on borrowed time) realistically outperform the Expendables (actors who are borrowing time with surgical assistance)?

The Kirby estate did not go after DC because those characters, as much as many of us love them, do not have the same market value as the Marvel characters who get named most often (Does the estate want Moon Boy?). 

If this is about intellectual property, why claim Spider-Man? Even those accounts which support the idea that Kirby had a greater hand in the character tend to show a concept very different from that which Marvel actually produced, bearing striking simiarities to the Fly, which Kirby helped develop for MLJ/Archie.

Given the tenuous impact Kiby had on Spider-Man, are Kirby's heirs going to give a cut of or concede their rights to owership of the Human Torch to the Burgos estate? Kirby clearly did not create Johnny Storm out of thin air.

This logic tends to make me believe this case is not about intellectual property.

Thank you for the clarification on the specifics of intellectual property law.  That certainly creates compelling logic for the Marvel before DC choice.

But it does not refute my argument completely. The Kirby estate has yet to claim the Challengers created 1956/57.  According to terms of this law as you have you have framed them, the window of opportunity is starting to close.  Wouldn't the Kirby estate have strengthened its case against Marvel had it pursued ownership of the Challengers? Wouldn't this establish a legal parallel, given that DC and Marvel operated on similar terms with regard to the employment of freelancers?

I do not suggest a "nefarious anti-Marvel conspiracy" - I don't live in a comic book. I do suggest that the Kirby estate is acting in its self-interest, however. Further, I suggest that they may be pursuing self-interst in a way that undermines the principle by which they claim their right. They are claiming the right to inherit a degree of ownership to characters because Jack Kirby has a hand in creating them, including Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four. I have not heard of a similar claim against DC for any caracter within the window.This suggests that the estate is going after high-market value characters. Kirby's contributions to Spider-Man are minimal by most accounts. Is the estate only claiming a small percentage of ownership to this character, comesurate to Kirby's contributions? I do not know for sure, but I rather doubt it. Are they working to advance the interests of Steve Ditko with regard to ownership? Not that I have heard, but, again I cannot say with certainty. As far as I know, the Kirby estate is the only party to this suit. Please correct me if I am wrong. In claiming the Fantastic Four, the Kirby estate is likely making a claim on the Human Torch. Again, are they planning to share ownership with heirs to Carl Burgos, who created the original Human Torch? I have my doubts. I

Nowhere did I say the Kirby estate was nafarious. But if they are going after Marvel without going after DC, they are not standing up for principle. If they are claming full ownership to characters that Kirby did not create without input from others, they are not standing up for principle. If what I think it possible is in fact true, this shows the estate to be every bit as self-interested as Marvel, which is being demonized for "screwing" Kirby.

As I have mentioned before, at a MidOhioCon years ago I was accosted by a belligerent fan who, for some reason, was all hot under the collar about the "millions" I had made from royalties off UNCANNY X-MEN. And he wasn't talking about the money I have made from multiple reprints of those books (which adds up to tens of thousands, not millions!). No, he meant the original issues, when they were published in the Seventies.

I tried to explain to him that there were no royalties paid, back then, and even if there had been, the books were only 35¢, so my net would not have been much. But he was having none of it. He was determined to be mad, and mad he was!

This morning, remembering this, I got to thinking about what Stan and Jack would have made off the Fantastic Four, in monthly royalties, if they had been treated "fairly." Meaning, if they got the same slice of the pie that we later artists and writers got when royalties were introduced.

As the plan was originally put in place (I have no idea what it is now), the creative team received 4% of the cover price, after the first 100,000 sales. That 4% was divided as 1.5% to the penciler, 1.5% to the writer, and 1% to the inker. The letter and colorist got nothing.

What would a deal like this have meant for Lee and Kirby? FANTASTIC FOUR at its peak sold about 400,000 copies per month (drool!), with, again at its peak, a 15¢ cover price. So the royalties would have been taken against 300,000 in sales, netting about $45,000. Stan and Jack, each receiving 1.5%, would have taken in $675. Not exactly a king's ransom, even in the Sixties!

So, the irony here -- and I think that word is actually applicable in this case -- is that later artists, such as myself, pulled in the big buck due in no small part to the one thing that causes a rise in the hackles of virtually every fan and over which those artists had no control: the ever increasing cover price. After that MidOhioCon, just for funzies, I worked out what my royalties on UNCANNY would have been, taking the highest sales and the highest cover price as "normal," and it came out to about $5,000 for the whole run. Again, not a king's ransom, spread over four years.

Contrast this to the first issue of SENSATIONAL SHE-HULK, which sold 400,000 copies* for $1.50. My share for penciling that issue was $6,750. As writer, I would have received the same.

What does all this mean? Was any of it "fair"? I wasn't doing any more work than Stan and Jack had done, and the issue didn't sell better than theirs. But that ten time higher price tag --- well, that made a BIG difference!

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* I pick this issue because I actually remember the numbers, and they square to the sales on Stan and Jack's FF. This was a first issue, of course, so sales dropped considerably with subsequent issues.