The problem for Marvel came with the contract’s language. Rights contracts are usually written with ridiculous specificity to try to define exactly what the buyer is getting. The language in this particular contract, according to sources, was too broad and ended up transferring a larger-than-expected swath of Marvel’s intellectual property to Fox. In short, instead of a limited number of X-Men, the movie studio ended up landing the rights to all things mutant in the Marvel universe in perpetuity. That windfall includes not just the X-Men we all recognize, such as Professor X and Wolverine, but
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