Marvel’s friendly neighborhood Spider-Man was victorious at the Supreme Court on Monday, or more to the point, Marvel was.
The court ruled 6-3 Monday that the inventor of a popular web shooting toy could not get royalties for sales after his patent expires.
The case centered on a dispute around royalty payments for the Spider-Man Web Blaster toy. It allows kids to shoot a type of Silly String from their wrists, pretending to shoot web like the famous wall crawler.
The toy was originally patented in 1990, which was set to expire in May 2010. Marvel agreed to pay Kimble royalties for the toy after a lawsuit settlement in 2001, and Kimble’s attorneys argue in court filings that the settlement didn’t have an expiration date for the royalties.
But Justice Elena Kagan, who issued the majority opinion, disagreed.
“Patents endow their holders with certain superpowers, but only for a limited time,” she wrote.
Kagan was joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor. Justice Samuel Alito, Chief Justice John Roberts and Clarence Thomas dissented.
The plaintiff had argued that a decades-old case called Brulotte v. Thys Co. “has not withstood the test of time,” according to court filings.
The case, originally decided in 1964, holds that an inventor can only be paid product royalties until the patent’s expiration date.
The court ruled in Brulotte that extending royalties beyond a patent also somehow extends the patent’s rights. But Kimble’s attorneys argued that once a patent has expired it could no longer prevent anyone from practicing the invention.
Marvel countered in court filings that Brulotte ensures the “patent holder receives compensation only for the rights granted by that patent.”
Congress has also rejected proposals over the years to change Brulotte, a nod that the ruling is still working, the filings read.
