system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How can Lego and other animated movies that I see all over Netflix use Spiderman and other characters in their films with The Avengers characters when it's a "rights" issue for live action films?

If I'm not mistaken, Sony owns the rights to Spiderman/X-Men properties while Disney owns the other Avengers characters...which is why we won't see them together on the big screen.

So what makes it ok for these animated, particularly Lego, films to do what many of us want to see in the live action blockbusters?
gpt
Because it's not a matter of ownership, it's a matter of licensing. Disney/Marvel "owns" the rights, and they license them out to various entities that allow them to do various things. Licensing out the rights doesn't give the other person absolute right to do anything they want, nor does it prevent other people from also getting rights to do stuff.

Though they are referencing characters from the Marvel universe, the LEGO Characters are very much novel creations as are those in the Super Squad Universe and other animated series. Lego worked out a deal with Marvel to create the LEGO versions of the characters and no doubt part of that agreement was to be allowed to create games and animation based on them as well.