Wes Davis, writing for The Verge:

You know how Marvel and DC have held joint ownership over trademarks for “Super Hero” for decades? That time is apparently mostly over, as the US Patent and Trademark Office has canceled the companies’ claim to several of their trademarks, reports Reuters.

I had no idea that “super hero” was a trademarked term. I’d guess most of the public didn’t either, despite being registered back in 1967. I assumed it was just a generic term. Perhaps that’s just five decades of my hearing the term “super hero” though.

The cancellation comes as the result of a challenge from Superbabies Limited, a small company that produces a series of Superbabies comics about, well, superhero babies. Superbabies creator S.J. Richold decided to challenge the two comic giants’ claim to the trademarks after DC “attempted to block Richold’s efforts to promote The Super Babies,” wrote the law firm that represented Richold in a release.

Congratulations to Richold and Superbabies Limited for bringing—and winning—this challenge. It seems ridiculous on its face that such a seemingly generic term could be trademarked, and has remained so for this long.

Curiously, Super Heroes and Super-Villain remain trademarked by DC and Marvel, though. I hope those are invalidated soon, too.

One of the lawyers involved in the Superbabies trademark challenge, Adam Adler, actually wrote up a two-part series of articles for Escapist Magazine lightly explaining how the companies came to jointly own the trademarks and what they’ve done to guard that ownership over the years.

Both are worth reading.