The latest James Bond movie will arrive on our screens in November. It's called Spectre, and it's Bond 24 in the official count, with Daniel Craig returning for a fourth time. SPECTRE has always been Bond's nemesis, ever since Ernst Stavro Blofeld's first cryptic appearance in From Russia With Love, the second Bond movie, released in 1963. And there's the rub: for 50 years since that movie, the name SPECTRE was the subject of an epic battle that kept an army of lawyers in clover for decades. Indeed, it would be possible for a smart young London lawyer's grandfather and father to have appeared in the successive cases brought since 1961 over the rights to certain Bond tropes, including the name SPECTRE, which stands for the Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion. But you knew that.

At no time in those years did Kevin O'Donovan McClory​ give up his claim that he and the British scriptwriter Jack Whittingham were essentially the co-authors of Ian Fleming's novel Thunderball, because they created the cinematic James Bond (who is different to the Bond of the books), the idea for SPECTRE, and the concept of nuclear blackmail. Blofeld was also their idea, they said. They never claimed to have invented James Bond, just the cinematic version of him.

McClory and Fleming met in 1958, when Fleming had written seven Bond books. He was desperate to see them turned into movies, but nothing was happening. McClory may have been a dyslexic Irishman but he had some dash: he had served on submarines during the war, dated Liz Taylor and worked as John Huston's assistant on The African Queen. Fleming asked him to produce a Bond movie. They began to collaborate with professional screenwriter Whittingham during 1959, but Fleming tried to cheat them, after they had finished the script for what became Thunderball. Without telling McClory or Whittingham, Fleming incorporated many of their ideas into his next novel, Thunderball.

They sued Fleming in March 1961 and won in the British High Court two years later. Fleming had to admit his actions and pay McClory damages of £35,000. McClory also won the film rights to the novel Thunderball, and a credit for himself and Whittingham on republications of the novel. That is why Albert "Cubby" Broccoli and Albert Saltzman, who had secured the film rights to nearly all of Fleming's Bond output in 1961, had to make a separate deal with McClory for the rights to Thunderball in 1965. That became Bond No. 3. And that is why McClory was able to remake Thunderball in the 1980s as Never Say Never Again, with Sean Connery returning as Bond after a 12-year absence.

That film involved more epic court battles. In 1976, McClory and Sean Connery sued Broccoli, United Artists and Danjaq Ltd (the holding company that Broccoli and Saltzman formed in 1962 to oversee their rights), claiming that the script for the next Bond movie, The Spy Who Loved Me, infringed on their rights in Thunderball. Connery and McClory abandoned this suit after two months. The empire then struck back: from 1978 to 1983, the Fleming trustees and United Artists tried to stop McClory from making and releasing Never Say Never Again. They failed, partly because Warner Bros backed McClory.

So far, McClory is winning most of the time when he goes to court. Fleming is now dead, but the battles rage on because the stakes are high and every Hollywood studio wants a piece of Bond. Now, McClory gets more ambitious and expands his claims. In the next round, he claims that all previous Bond movies since Thunderball owe him a huge debt for copyright infringement, since he came up with the idea for SPECTRE, the cinematic version of Bond, and Blofeld. He convinces Sony he holds enough Bond rights for them to start a new rival series of Bond films. They pay him $2 million. In early 1998, Danjaq and MGM (who bought UA) sue Sony, Columbia and McClory to stop this. They, in turn, are counter-sued.

Sony loses the case, and the appeal. They withdraw and leave McClory to duke it out with Danjaq and MGM. This time, McClory loses in the US District Court. He appeals and loses again in 2001, this time badly. The court effectively quashes his claims. McClory dies in 2006, but not before he sees one final twist. In 2004, Sony buys a 20 per cent stake in the ailing MGM. McClory may never have been able to win the justice he claimed, but Sony succeeded in buying a place at the Bond table.

Fast forward to late 2013. MGM, Danjaq and the estate of Kevin McClory announce agreement on the sale of all McClory's rights in Bond. Everything is back under one roof, with Cubby Broccoli's heirs, after 50 years of legal pugilism.

And that is why the new movie can be called SPECTRE. In fact, it is the only reason it can be called that.

Fleming and McClory may be turning in their graves. Their feud defined McClory's adult life, after Fleming betrayed him in 1961. Cubby Broccoli, who was not part of the original deception, might be smiling from a sundeck in Hollywood Heaven – except no such place exists. It's about as real as SPECTRE.

Twitter: @ptbyrnes

​