Supreme Court's Ruling Full Of Spider-Man Quips

The inventor of a popular Spider-Man web-shooting toy can't keep reeling in royalties after his patent ran out, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 today. Stephen Kimble sold his patent on the toy to Marvel in 2001, and as the Verge explains, Marvel said it would pay him royalties indefinitely. But when it uncovered a 1964 Supreme Court decision that found royalties could cease once a patent expired, Marvel in 2010 halted payments. It's a ruling that's perhaps garnering more headlines than usual, thanks to the number of comic-book jokes Elena Kagan incorporated into the opinion she wrote for the court.

Vox points out that per Supreme Court Review, Kagan is "a comic book fan and an avid fan of comic-book based action films, claiming that she has seen them all and that her favorite film is The Avengers" (she also likes frozen yogurt). A collection of her most Spider-y lines, from Slate and Vox:

The parties were "apparently contemplating that [the royalties] would continue for as long as kids want to imitate Spider-Man (by doing whatever a spider can)."
"Patents endow their holders with certain superpowers, but only for a limited time."
"To the contrary, the decision's close relation to a whole web of precedents means that reversing it could threaten others."
"As against this superpowered form of stare decisis, we would need a superspecial justification to warrant reversing [an old decision]."
"What we can decide, we can undecide. But stare decisis teaches that we should exercise that authority sparingly. Cf. S. Lee and S. Ditko, Amazing Fantasy No 15: "Spider-Man," p 13 (1962): ('n this world, with great power there must also come great responsibility)."

To me it is a contractual issue.

If there was a written contract.

I agree with the ruling overall. However Marvel should have stuck to their bargain and kept paying the man.

I'm a great fan of interjecting pop culture into anything, including this.

Yeah, this should have been a straight up matter of contract law. I wonder what the particulars of the case were.

I agree, even though the patent ended, they said they would pay him indefinitely. Going back on that makes them look bad.

WASHINGTON — Writing for the majority in a patent case about a Spider-Man toy, Justice Elena Kagan concluded her decision with a quotation from a 1962 Spider-Man comic book: “In this world, with great power there must also come — great responsibility.”

The lesson, Justice Kagan wrote, is that the Supreme Court should use its power cautiously when it is asked to overrule a precedent. “What we can decide, we can undecide,” she wrote. “But stare decisis” — Latin for “to stand by things decided” — “teaches that we should exercise that authority sparingly.”

That led the court to leave in place, by a 6-to-3 vote, a widely criticized 1964 decision and to rule against an inventor who had unwittingly signed an unfavorable contract....

... The settlement included a licensing agreement that called for royalty payments to Mr. Kimble from the sale of the competing toy, with no end date.

But the agreement ran afoul of the 1964 decision, Brulotte v. Thys Company, which said that royalty payments after the expiration of a patent were unlawful. Neither side had been aware of the decision when they struck their deal, but Marvel later argued that the decision spared it from having to pay Mr. Kimble after 2010, when his patent expired....

Always renew your patents if you want to keep getting paid for them.

Well, that's a horrible decision (and so is the original one). It essentially means that a patent holder needs to ensure that a patent payment is front-loaded and up-front, which is a risky move for a good number of businesses. The concept of working with the entity willing to buy the patent for mutually beneficial gains just got shot in the leg.