Not a good day for Marvel: Some time ago, Joe Simon lost the first round of his lawsuit to reclaim ownership of Captain America. Today, even as Stan Lee was musing to the press that he might sue Marvel, the decision against Simon was reversed. If you want to read the actual decision, you can download a PDF file of it here. Basically, Simon was acting under the recent revisions to the copyright laws (fomented in large part by the late Sonny Bono) that give the creator of the work the right to reclaim a copyright at the point where it would originally have expired.
Marvel had argued three points against Simon's claim. The first judge threw out two of them but found against Simon on the third. An appellate court has now unanimously reversed the third point, so Joe's case can proceed and Marvel will have to come up with new arguments and/or refight the three on which they lost. Or maybe they'll just offer Joe a huge sum of cash. Or both.
Actually, no one knows precisely what this means in terms of the final disposition of the character and I'd be the last to claim I do. But I can tell you that there have already been several other suits of this nature filed — some quietly settled, others ongoing. And I can say with some certainty that if Joe prevails, and probably even if he doesn't, there will be a lot more. In the sixties, The Avengers found Captain America frozen inside a massive iceberg. Joe Simon's suit is just the tip of another, even larger one.