Marvel wins the "Iron Man 3" poster plagiarism lawsuit after more than 4 years

A lawsuit that lasted more than four years has finally come to an end. In the case of "Iron Man 3" being accused of plagiarism in the poster, the federal court announced on Monday that Marvel won the case and the plagiarism charge was not established.

Background: Four years ago, brothers Ben and Ray Lai, who run Horizon Comics, filed a lawsuit. They believed that the poster of Marvel's "Iron Man 3" plagiarized the design of a character named Caliban from their own comic "Radix".

The two also claimed that they were employees of Marvel and had participated in comics such as Thor, and that at least six Marvel employees knew about the comic Radix. But the judge said there was no evidence that any of these people had seen Caliban's character design or participated in the poster design of Iron Man 3. Horizon Comics's belief that there was a connection between the two was based on speculation.

Horizon Comics submitted an expert report describing its structure, face and head, and angles, and believed that the two works were "strikingly similar." The judge responded that the expert report was "ambiguous" in its description of the obvious similarities and could not overturn any reasonable possibility of Marvel's independent creation. Agreeing with Marvel's points about the differences in specific postures, the distribution of blue light sources, and the significant differences in overall color, it was believed that "there are still enough differences between the two works." In addition, compared with the insufficient evidence of plagiarism submitted by Horizon Comics, Marvel also provided irrefutable evidence that it independently created the "Iron Man 3" poster.