Horizon Comics and its founders, Ben and Raymond Lai, have refiled a copyright infringement lawsuit against Marvel Entertainment and Disney for allegedly copying the Lais' distinctive armor for armors in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The Lai brothers had an Image comic book series called Radix that ran in 2001 and 2002 and featured state of the art armor designs. The brothers feel that Marvel has taken advantage of their distinctive designs by using them for Iron Man and Ant-Man's armor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The Lais had previously sued Marvel Entertainment and Disney upon the release of Iron Man 3, with one of their biggest arguments being how similar the poster for the film was to one of their drawings from Radix.
That lawsuit was eventually dismissed and the brothers noted that the legal fees for continuing the legal fight was too much at the time. However, they believe that Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame just continued the infringement and that they believe that Ant-Man's armor was also infringing on their work.
The Lais famously had their art used without their permission for a Massachusetts Institute of Technology government grant (the M.I.T. grant was for designing armor like in Radix and the college used their actual Radix drawings for the grant). M.I.T. apologized and the Lais accepted. They are not willing to let go what they see as Marvel doing the same, though. Especially since they worked for Marvel after the M.I.T. incident, so they claim that this makes it clear that Marvel was familiar with their work.
The brothers released the following statement, ""We started Radix in 1995 with the goal of creating something unique. It was with Radix that we became known and recognized in the American comic book industry. We made a name for ourselves. It allowed us to work all over the place, including with Marvel.
MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) copied one of the Radix characters in 2002 to get a $50 million grant, we decided not to sue because they publicly apologized and acknowledged their mistake. But with Marvel, it's repeat infringement. After years of litigation in the U.S. and substantial sums, they continue to copy our characters. It's causing us significant damage and impacting our ability to make a living as artists. It is clear that we cannot accept this repeated behavior. The only way to make things right was to file these proceedings."
Source: CTV News