Who Legally Owns the Avengers Name in Marvel Lore Explained
Warning: spoilers for Thunderbolts* ahead!The Avengers have been Marvel's premier superteam for 62 years, but who actually owns their name? As fans who just caught the MCU's Thunderbolts* already know, there are some New Avengers in town, as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine tries to hijack the franchise. However, this has left fans asking questions about what the 'Avengers' even are in a legal sense. Thankfully, after six decades of Avengers history, there are hard answers to these questions.
The Avengers formed in September 1963's The Avengers #1 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. In that comic, the name is coined by founding member Janet Van Dyne, aka the Wasp. This was inspired by her own experiences taking on the alien threat known as the Creature from Kosmos, which had killed her father. The team have kept the name ever since, which has also been used by the New Avengers, Dark Avengers, Young Avengers, Great Lakes Avengers, and more.
However, the Wasp isn't the owner of the Avengers trademark. That honor goes to Tony Stark, whose business head led him to trademark the name immediately after the team's formation. For most of Marvel history, Tony has owned and protected the Avengers trademark via his company Stark Holdings. Tony has used the Avengers name for various branding deals via the Maria Stark foundation, which funds the Avengers and Damage Control (who clean up after their battles.) However, Tony has lost control of the trademark before.
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Tony Stark Owns the Avengers Trademark
...But There Have Been Plenty of Times He Didn't Enforce It
While Wasp came up with the Avengers name and Tony Stark owns it, Iron Man has taken a gentle touch with protecting the trademark... at least in most cases. As a general rule, the Avengers allow founding members to use the Avengers name for spin-off teams with little to no oversight, such as Hank Pym's Avengers A.I., Tony Stark's West Coast Avengers and Captain America's Avengers Emergency Response Squad. However, Tony has served cease and desist letters to teams like the Great Lakes Avengers, who used the name without permission, and the Avengers initially refused to allow the Young Avengers to use the name.
In Deadpool Infinity Comic #1, it was revealed that Reed Richards and Tony Stark have a running arrangement where if one of them dies (or is presumed dead) their intellectual property passes to the other in order to keep it out of the wrong hands. This means that over the years, Reed Richards and the Fantastic Four have likely been the technical stewards of the Avengers trademark.
There have also been times when Tony just wasn't able to enforce his trademark - for example when Norman Osborn took over global security and launched his own Avengers team, at a time when Tony was a fugitive on the run. All of these occurrences are understandable, but there's one time that Tony really dropped the ball. That time came in Great Lakes Avengers by Zac Gorman and Will Robson.
The Great Lakes Avengers Used the Avengers Trademark to Blackmail Tony Stark
The Z-List Team Finally Achieved a BIG Win
The GLA are a group of Z-list heroes who have used various stolen names, including the Great Lakes X-Men, Great Lakes Champions and Great Lakes Defenders. Every so often, the teams they're imitating force them to knock if off via legal means, however it turned out that team member Flatman, aka Val Ventura, had attempted to file a trademark the first time the team tried to use the Avengers name. This was blocked because of Tony Stark's prior claim, but in 2016, oversights with Stark Holdings caused Tony to lose ownership, with the trademark automatically switching to Flatman.
This meant that not only were the Great Lakes Avengers now the only official Avengers, but they could even take legal action against anyone else using the name. Iron Man dispatched lawyer Connie Ferrari (a former love interest of Captain America) to reacquire the name, and the Great Lakes Avengers agreed to hand it back - but only if they were recognized as an official Avengers off-shoot from that point on. Connie made the deal, and the trademark returned to Stark Holdings, with the GLA now a permanent Avengers subsidiary.
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That's the history of who owns the Avengers name in Marvel continuity, with Tony Stark, Flatman and - hypothetically - Reed Richards being the main owners of the name. However, in the Marvel Universe, things are constantly in flux, meaning that plenty of villains and unofficial hero groups have gotten away with using the name despite having no legal right to it. Ultimately, the Avengers have way bigger things to worry about than people trying to rip off their name, and Tony Stark's lawyers tend to handle the actual enforcement of the Avengers brand, with Iron Man often giving fellow heroes the benefit of the doubt (just not the GLA.)
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