Marvel Sues City of Heroes Makers

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.

sad

[randalx]

This is really really stupid. It's like suing crayola cause kids can draw Spider-Man. The game provides the tools to create a character and it's up to the player to make him look how they want.

Is Cryptic supposed to keep a database of all colour schemes of all super heroes that ever existed (also the multiple costume variations they occasioanly pull out to boost sales) and prevent users from picking them. How many do you think there are? Probably over 10,000 from Marvel and then there's DC and all the rest. It's one thing if the game makers were to rip off Marvel but this is entirely different.

If they want to be asses they should follow the RIAA's lead and sue users. I hope somebody at Marvel comes to their senses and stops this BS.

How to draw Marvel.

[Coltman]

I guess they forgot that they taught the world how to create these characters, right?? I remember having the "How to draw" books and having a couple of them dedicated to Hulk, She-Hulk, X-men, etc. Look out everyone, hide those books if you still gottem. It's Stan "Wannabe Elliet Ness" Lee comming to get you!

Re:Oh noes!

[Walkiry]

>And realized Marvel is completely out to lunch on this. They claim that CoH is infringing IP because they didn't disallow people from typing in the specific, trademarked names?

It gets better, they actually do disallow them. Cryptic sent a request to Marvel, DC and others for a list of trademarked stuff they wanted banned, and you won't be able to name your character just "Hulk" or "Superman", because that's filtered.

Re:Die already, Marvel

[drmike0099]

They've been working on one for some time, or so I've been informed by someone in a position to know these things. There is a long delay between the idea stage and the release stage, though, so it probably won't be out for a bit. I'm guessing they've been keeping a low profile so that they don't inadvertantly confuse everyone into joining up with CoH thinking it's the "superhero game" they've been hearing about.

Re:Oh noes!

[cpt kangarooski]

No, it is actually a little different. The trick is that Bic cannot take the pen away, cannot review what you've drawn, and basically is not involved.

Think back to the Napster case and the Grokster case. Napster was destroyed in court, whereas Grokster has (so far) survived. The key difference was that Napster had centralized servers, and could therefore check to see whether infringement was occurring, and could act to stop it. Grokster could not since they made the software, but didn't have any involvement with the network.

CoH is centralized.

They should be taking this very seriously.

The contributory infringement case against them would be stronger than a vicarious infringement case, but so long as direct infringements are going on, they really are in some degree of trouble.

Re:sad

[bconway]

Read the EULA. Cryptic owns and is responsible for its users creations.

Some Quick Thoughts

[vjmurphy]

What makes the character a rip off?

For example, if I have a character named Ferro Man, who wears an armored suit, am I infringing on Iron Man? Okay, what version of Iron Man, then, is Marvel preventing me from copying? The gray suited one? The red and gold armored one? The one who flies and blasts things? What if I change the name and sex to Ferro Woman and Marvel later comes out with a character named Iron Woman?

And how is Marvel planning on preventing users of their own future game from creating a BattyMan or a Green Lamp character? Will DC sue Marvel when Marvel releases their game?

Cryptic does police as much as they can, but is a character named the Uncredible Bulk a problem? What if the character is a skinny white girl?

What if I have an Asian character with claws named "The China Wolf"? Am I infringing? What if Marvel decides next week to change Wolverine into an Asian girl?

Anyhow, just things that pop into my mind. I currently have a character on CoH whose name was just used on the Cartoon Network's Justice League Unlimited show and was previously not used for a superhero. If DC changes her costume or powers to look like my character, can I sue them (or rather, can Cryptic sue them, since they own that character now)?

Just things to thing about.

Re:This isn't about just the tool

[Palarran]

Which leads me to wonder... What happens when, say, Neil Gaiman, logs on to City of Heroes and creates "Dream"? (Gloss over the artist/author rights, please.)

If EULAs are binding contracts, has he just signed away his property rights?

Re:A new low.

[FooAtWFU]

Shouldn't this be filed under OCILA? COH could be construed as an "access provider" hosting content for its uses, and if the Marvel people find them, they should file a takedown complaint against the individual user.

Re:A new low.

[forgotten_my_nick]

Funny you should mention that [bbspot.com].