Originally Posted by
bob.schoonover
This theory doesn't pass muster. The lawsuit is not a slam dunk against Marvel (I'm not sure it's even anything more than a nuisance), and the way it gets resolved is via Disney spending more money, not on losing the rights entirely. It's worth noting that, even if the lawsuits were somewhat successful, the Ditko estate would not have the rights to most of the Spider-man characters (whether or not AF15 counted as work for hire, the rest of the issues certainly would have counted that way, so Ditko's estate might get partial ownership of Spidey, Aunt May, Flash, and Liz, but not any of the villains, symbiotes, Jonah, Gwen, MJ, etc.) and would only have partial ownership of SM - there's not a whole lot they can do with that other than take more money from Disney (because Disney would be the other partial owner).
As a side note, Ben would most likely be considered such a derivative character that his ownership situation would end up being whatever Peter's ended up being (think about it - if you can just clone a character and give them a new name to shift the copyright, there's no reason for Marvel not to do that with everyone - resolve the Death of Dr Strange w/a clone of Stephen, boom, we're clear!!).
The part I really don't understand is the idea that Peter being set apart from everyone is somehow a new concept. Marvel does this all the time: after Secret Empire, during and after Superior Spider-man, right before JMS came aboard, etc. Spider-man is very often bereft of allies, then powers through anyway.