Ben and Raymond Lai are two brothers from Montreal who began their comic book company Horizon Comics Productions in 1995.
In the early 2000s, the brothers found great success with their Radix comic book series. Now, they’re suing Marvel and Disney, and this isn’t the first time they’ve done so, either.
“After years of legal dispute and substantial sums of money, they continue to copy our characters,” Raymond Lai said in a statement to The Canadian Press. “It causes us significant damage and has an impact on our ability to make a living as artists. Clearly, this repeated behaviour cannot be accepted.”
After watching Marvel’s “Avengers: Infinity War”, the brothers noticed striking similarities between the body armour worn by Maxwell — a hero in their Radix series — and the suit design of both Iron Man and Ant Man.
The brothers had previously sued Marvel Entertainment and parent company The Walt Disney Company in 2013 over the suit design used in an “Iron Man 3” poster but lost that legal battle.
Ben and Raymond Lai say Marvel has copied their designs again.
On April 22, lawyers for the Montreal comic book company filed a motion in Quebec Superior Court against Marvel Entertainment and Disney for alleged copyright infringement.
The plaintiffs are suing for compensatory damages yet to be disclosed, and they are asking the court to issue a permanent injunction against Marvel and Disney to “put an end to this deliberate and persistent infringement,” according to the lawsuit.
Around March 2002, Marvel’s editor-in-chief, Chester Bror Cebulski, approached the Lai brothers, but they turned down the offer, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit said that around the same time, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology copied illustrations from the Radix series for a $50-million research grant to create what is now the Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies.
MIT issued a public apology to the Lai brothers, however, acknowledging the unauthorized use of images, the lawsuit said.
“We decided not to take legal action against MIT because they publicly apologized and admitted their mistake,” Raymond wrote. “But with Marvel, it’s repeated infringement.”