Last week, owner of Los Angeles toy company Box-O-Mania Maxim Tselevich sued Marvel Entertainment over an alleged Iron Man merchandising deal gone wrong.
Tselevich claims that in 2010 both companies worked out a deal to create special Iron Man’s Lair Play Boxes, playhouses that featured Iron Man and would be released in November of 2010 to coincide with the release of Iron Man 2 on DVD.
According to the lawsuit, Box-O-Mania claims that Marvel “game them the runaround for months,” refusing to give over the artwork and intellectual property rights required in order to create the playhouses. The plaintiffs also claim they’ve lost $33,000 on this deal and discovered that Marvel didn’t have the rights to license Iron Man’s intellectual property in the first place.
The lawsuit alleges claims of fraud, breach of fiduciary duty and negligence. As of this writing, a Marvel spokesperson has not responded with comments.
