Marvel Sues City of Heroes Makers 186
Walkiry (and many, many others) writes "In yet another copyright bickering lawsuit, Marvel is suing NCSoft and Cryptic Studios over their MMORPG City of Heroes due to copyright infringement, apparently because of the costume creator. "Marvel argues that the game's character creation engine easily allows players to design characters that are virtual copies of its own superheros, including 'The Incredible Hulk'. Marvel seeks unspecified damages and an injunction against the two companies to stop using its characters." There are quite a few people suspicious that this is nothing but an effort by Marvel to undermine Cryptic Studios' successful game to prepare for the launch of their own comic book based MMORPG." USA Today has the story as well.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh noes! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh noes! (Score:2, Insightful)
Die already, Marvel (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't want to play a super-hero who is second banana to Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four or the Avengers. I don't want to have to deal with people wanting to be able to storm the Avengers Mansion because they think they should be able to.
I want to make a hero who is as unique as I can make him, and is not burdened down by years of comic book history, much of which is crappily written. (I refer you to the Clone Saga, in particular, and most titles that start with the letter 'X'.)
Kierthos
Re:Oh noes! (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll have to admit when I first started playing the game I made a DBZ character and there WERE a lot of wolverine clones out there, but none came anywhere close to the level of detail that Marvel characters have.
Also, if I'm not mistaken there are certain names that you cannot use even though there are no characters using them. One that comes to mind is "Lucky".
I hate that lawsuits like this are even allowed to see the light of day. Of course people playing a superhero themed game are going to create characters that remind them of superheroes that they are familiar with...people are too lazy to create their own, and to scared that someone might care think that their creation is stupid.
I hope that this lawsuit gets thrown out, or that Marvel at least loses. It's horrible that a company comes out with an innovative product that fill a request from the market(more differentiation in characters) and someone else decideds to sue.
I am personally going to boycott Marvel at least until this blows over.
Re:How to draw Marvel. (Score:2, Insightful)
Sign here to join Class Action lawsuit (Score:2, Insightful)
Easy Solution (Score:3, Insightful)
The elite may freely violate copyright? (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact, neither case is correct, and the horrible nonlogic of damaging a general purpose system with the goal of restricting certain things is stupid.
To take this from the other side, if Marvel wins this terrible case, then that implies that creating a character in City of Heroes is akin to creating one in a comic book- so if your guy has an orange cape and yellow tights and black hair, maybe you can sue someone who introduces such a character in comic books. Meaning that, if you want to create a comic book with an entirely new character, you can't just check the history of comics, you have to access the CoH (and any other relevant MMORG) database to make sure you aren't "infringing" on a similar design that some kid in Kansas came up with at 2 AM on pot.
as if Marvel's MMO would let you play Hulk (Score:3, Insightful)
So they're suing over a game that lets you mimic their own heroes, arguing that it ruins the market for their own superhero game, even though their own game won't let you play their own heroes.
Re:A new low. (Score:3, Insightful)
That might be a little harsh.
Without knowing how the characters are generated (TFA is a little vague), if there are macros which will use the same patterns as the X-Men stuff, that might be a little dodgy
For example:
If there is a button/feature/whatever which seems to treat a Hulk-like character as a 'generic superhero', then I can definitely see Marvel defending against this. They don't want it to become utterly generic, they'd lose their right to defend their ideas.
Similarly, if the created uniforms use the same colour pattern as an X-Men uniform, that's a little too close to be accidental.
It would depend on wether or not you had a mode that allowed you to describe wanting a song that sounds like "Hard Days's Night" or not. In this case, a gigantic, green, 'science-based tanker'-type hero that moves and behaves nearly identically sounds an awful lot like the mode to make HDN soundalikes. As soon as you specifically write the macros to handle being that close to the other person's stuff, you might have gone over the line.
If the user would have to manually paint Wolverine's suit, it's not infringing. If they have a macro which makes an X-Men suit
Just my $0.02 CDN. =)
Remember the good old days... (Score:2, Insightful)
(Sorry in advance for the long post)
Does anybody remember the good old days...
...when companies tried to actually be better than their competition instead of taking legal measures to ensure that they don't have competition?
...when you could have a clever idea and actually be free to proudly develop, sell, or give it away instead of hiding it or anonymously distributing it?
...when stupid people sometimes got sued for doing stupid things, instead of smart people ALWAYS getting sued for doing smart things?
I've played City of Heroes, and it's a cool game. It's a very original idea in MMORPGs, and there is NOTHING in the game that in any way helps, steers, or suggests that a player create any superhero that I've ever heard of before. All of my characters are 100% made up by me, as are over 99% of the other characters I've seen online.
Can you create a character that looks like other licensed characters? Sure, but that's by virtue of the flexibility of the character creation options with billions of combinations of body type, costume styles, accessories, and colors available. The "sue people who use pens" analogy is appropriate and right on the money.
I have seen a few characters now and then that are imitations of "real" comic book characters. When I do see them, I tend to think it's kind of lame. (Really, do you suffer that profound a lack of imagination that you can't come up with something original?) Obviously, another reason people may do this is because they are avid fans of existing licensed characters. No one (neither the publisher NOR the player) should be punished for this type of activity. Sometimes when I like a character in a movie or on television, I'll impersonate them in various real-life situations. ("I've got a bad feeling about this...") I'm not trying to rip off or demean the character, it's the opposite: sincere appreciation for the character.
Hopefully, this lawsuit will be tossed out before it sees any kind of light of day for, among others, precisely these reasons:
1. City of Heroes does not entice or conduce players to create likenesses of licensed characters. In fact, they actively discourage it by threatening to ban players who do so in their license agreement and screening character names for all common (and many uncommon) licensed character names. This is a reasonable effort, and to demand more would be holding the publisher to an unreasonably high (and unreasonably costly) standard of vigilance.
2. By asking the publisher of City of Heroes to disallow the possibility or ability of creating likenesses of licensed characters, you are effectively asking them to unreasonably cripple their product by severely limiting the ability of players to customize their characters, an important selling point of their game. It would be similar to asking Microsoft to prevent Microsoft Word from being able to type the scripts to copyrighted television shows.
3. I'm not conceding this point by any means, but EVEN IF City of Heroes did somehow entice or conduce people to copy licensed characters, Marvel cannot possibly prove that they have suffered any damages from the publisher's actions. If they were receiving complaint letters from people threatening to boycott The Hulk because of something a hulk character did in City of Heroes, maybe, but even that's a stretch since it is obvious to reasonable people that City of Heroes and Marvel are not associated with each other. Also worth nothing is that Marvel does NOT have a competing product on the market, so it is not like City of Heroes is stealing customers by swiping the likenesses of Marvel's characters. (sigh)
The key in all of these reasons is the standard of what is reasonable (and unreasonable). I hope with every fiber of my being that the publisher fights this lawsuit for several reasons. First, if they settle, then it is effectively an endorsement for Marvel to continue making unreasonable demands on companies and individuals. Second, if M
Re:A new low. (Score:1, Insightful)
Marvel is REALLY out of line here!!