For most of the modern comics era, two rival companies shared a trademark on the single most generic word in their industry. Marvel and DC — direct competitors in every other respect — jointly registered and enforced “Super Hero” in the United States, and used it to push back on smaller publishers who put the word on a cover or a title.
That arrangement ended in 2024, when a London-based publisher called Superbabies Ltd petitioned to cancel the registrations and won by default after Marvel and DC did not defend them. This piece walks through what the trademark actually covered, why a jointly-owned mark was unusual, how the challenge succeeded, and what it does and does not mean for creators.
A trademark is not a copyright — that difference is the whole story
Copyright protects a specific creative work: the drawings, the script, the character design. Trademark protects a name or symbol that identifies the source of goods, so customers know who made the thing they are buying. The two systems overlap constantly in comics, and fans conflate them constantly.
Nobody ever “owned” the idea of a superhero. What Marvel and DC held were registrations covering the term “Super Hero” for particular commercial categories — comic books, toys, costumes and similar goods. That is narrower than it sounds in a headline, but it is broad enough to be a real problem for an independent publisher who wants the word in a series title.
It also mattered that the registrations were joint. Shared ownership of a trademark between two competitors is genuinely rare, because the point of a mark is to indicate a single source. Two sources undercuts that logic — and that weakness sat at the centre of the eventual challenge.
How Marvel and DC used it
In practice the mark was used defensively and pre-emptively. Independent creators reported receiving objections when they tried to register titles containing “super hero” or close variants, and the practical effect was that small publishers renamed things rather than fight two of the largest entertainment companies in the world over a word.
That chilling effect is what critics objected to most. Almost nobody argued Marvel had a weak claim to Iron Man. Plenty of people argued that a generic genre label — the equivalent of “western” or “detective story” — should not be locked up by the two dominant players in that genre.
The 2024 challenge and the default cancellation
Superbabies Ltd, the publisher behind a comic of the same name, filed a petition with the US Patent and Trademark Office's Trademark Trial and Appeal Board seeking cancellation, arguing the term was generic for the genre and that joint ownership by rivals was inconsistent with what a trademark is supposed to do.
Marvel and DC did not file a response. In September 2024 the Board entered a default judgment and cancelled the registrations at issue. A default is not a ruling that the word is definitively generic forever — it is a ruling that the registrants did not defend, so the registrations fall.
- FactIn 2024, Superbabies Ltd petitioned the USPTO's Trademark Trial and Appeal Board to cancel the jointly-held “Super Hero” registrations, and the Board cancelled them by default judgment after Marvel and DC filed no response.Source: Reuters
- FactUS trademark law protects words and symbols that identify the commercial source of goods or services — it does not protect ideas, genres or creative works, which fall under copyright.Source: United States Patent and Trademark Office
What actually changed for creators
The realistic effect is on titling and marketing. An independent creator can put “superhero” in a series name, a store name or a product listing with far less risk of a demand letter over that word alone. That is a meaningful practical win for small publishers, storefronts and merch sellers.
What has not changed: Batman, Spider-Man, the S-shield, Wakanda and every other character, name and logo remain protected by copyright and by their own trademarks. The generic label is loose. The characters are not.
Why fans should care
The story is a clean illustration of how the comics business actually works underneath the stories — two rivals cooperating on rights, indie publishers routing around legal risk, and a genre label that spent decades as private property.
It is also a reminder that most of comics history is business history. Character rights, page rates, distribution deals and trademark filings shaped which heroes you know as reliably as any editorial decision did.
Sources
- [1] Reuters — Marvel, DC lose 'Super Hero' trademarks after challenge
- [2] United States Patent and Trademark Office — What is a trademark?
