Mr. McFarlane was once a big name in the comics industry. Less so these days, but he was the most popular Spider-Man artist of his day, he helped found the No. 3 publisher Image, he created one of Image's flagship books Spawn (later turned into a terrible couple of movies and some moderately cool cartoons), and he used that to springboard a very successful toy company.
Well, back when his book Spawn was in its infancy, he wanted to really kick it off into high-gear around issue 7 or 8 (can't recall exactly which issue it started), and so recruited a number of top-tier writers to write several issues for him. These were all pretty famous names at the time (at least famous for the comics industry): Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Dave Sim, and Neil Gaiman. I might be forgetting someone, but it doesn't matter - the important name in that list is the last, for our purposes today.
Most of these stories were eminently forgettable, but then they all wrote single-issue stories so you couldn't expect a whole lot. Gaiman's was by far the most energetic of the set, though, and he created a number of interesting characters and setting elements for McFarlane. McFarlane should have been grateful, because really Spawn had little going for it up to that point besides his overrated art, and I suspect he acted grateful - but as soon as he got the opportunity, McFarlane violated the agreement he had with Gaiman which began a number of long legal battles.
You can read Gaiman's own thoughts on the matter here. There's a follow-up here. He also describes some of the legal shenanigans McFarlane got up to in an effort to twist copyright law to his own ends here.
Those links show that the courts sided with Gaiman in every single instance, granting him ownership of characters he created: Angela, Cagliostro, and Medieval Spawn. Believe it or not, this case established some important legal precedent from what I understand.
Thing is, apparently Todd didn't like this much, so he created a secondary Medieval Spawn character - basically a carbon-copy of the first, so he could continue to use the (different) character without paying Gaiman any royalties (never mind all the royalties he already owed him, but that's another matter.) Well, I guess a judge took issue with this because recently a ruling was handed down with an awesomely geeky statement to accompany it:
"The two characters are similar enough to suggest that either Dark Ages [McFarlane] Spawn is derivative of Medieval (Gaiman) Spawn or it is the same character to which plaintiff owns the copyright.
"Much as defendant [McFarlane] tries to distinguish the two knight Hellspawn, he never explains why, of all the universe of possible Hellspawn incarnations, he introduced two knights from the same century," Crabb writes. "Not only does this break the Hellspawn 'rule' that Malebolgia never returns a Hellspawns [sic] to Earth more than once every 400 years (or possibly every 100 years, as suggested in Spawn, No. 9, exh. #1, at 4), it suggests that what defendant really wanted to do was exploit the possibilities of the knight introduced in issue no. 9. (This possibility is supported by the odd timing of defendant’s letter to plaintiff on February 14, 1999, just before publication of the first issue of Spawn The Dark Ages, to the effect that defendant was rescinding their previous agreements and retaining all rights to Medieval (Gaiman) Spawn.)
"If defendant really wanted to differentiate the new Hellspawn, why not make him a Portuguese explorer in the 16th century; an officer of the Royal Navy in the 18th century, an idealistic recruit of Simon Bolivar in the 19th century, a companion of Odysseus on his voyages, a Roman gladiator, a younger brother of Emperor Nakamikado in the early 18th century, a Spanish conquistador, an aristocrat in the Qing dynasty, an American Indian warrior or a member of the court of Queen Elizabeth I? It seems far more than coincidence that Dark Ages (McFarlane) Spawn is a knight from the same century as Medieval (Gaiman) Spawn."
Judge knows her stuff. Here's Gaiman on the latest development.
Oh, and before I forget, here's my latest character design: Jade Fan. As always, comments are welcome.
Anyway, that's all for now.
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