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Marvel Sues City of Heroes Makers

Posted by Zonk on from the you-wouldn't-like-me-when-i'm-angry dept.

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.

19 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. A new low. by dprust · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A new low in using the courts to unethically hurt the competition. It makes me scared to innovate. For example, I'm writing a music description language. If someone uses it to create music that is significantly similar to a copyrighted piece of work, am I going to get sued? This abuse of the courts is killing this country.

    1. Re:A new low. by UWC · · Score: 3, Informative

      The character creation process in CoH allows a LARGE amount of customization. When I created my character, there were no pre-set costumes or color schemes. You choose your origin, power types, and so on, a mix and match type deal. There's no particular "Hulk" power/appearance set to choose, though with the customizability I can see the allure of mimicking your favorite hero's power sets when you can.

      Then you pick your character's appearance. There are a few body types including big bulky monster-sized guys (which I assume Marvel has not trademarked, Hulk being a Jekyll/Hyde homage/retelling already), which don't start out green or with purple pants. Again, there are people who use the engine's customization options to mimic their favorite hero, and of course the ones with simpler costumes (e.g. the Hulk wears... purple pants) are significantly simpler to copy than many other characters, the in-game copies of which are recognizable mainly because Marvel, DC, etc. have indeed done great jobs with making their trademarked costumes universally recognizable to the point where the in-game copes, which often have to improvise with incorrect patterns, equipment, and so on (because CoH does NOT actively try to allow creation of already trademarked characters) are still recognizable as the homages that they are.

      --
      Honor Among Slackers. A veri
    2. Re:A new low. by Babbster · · Score: 5, Informative
      There are no "macros" per se. What happens during CoH costume creation is that you have three basic skeletons (male, female and "huge"), three body areas (head, upper body and chest) and multiple areas within those three areas to customize the look. Now, you can create, say, a character that looks exactly like Hulk by giving him the huge skeleton, green skin and hair, the closest face available and purple pants - that would be the absolute easiest ripoff to pull. You could make Cyclops by choosing the partial mask or mask with hair, a visor and his blue/yellow costume (with some tech accoutrements depending on which era you're shooting for) - again, a very easy one. The more complicated costumes could take a lot of time to build but you can get close to most of them.

      Of course, all that being said, NCSoft does NOT provide templates for making ripoff characters easily (like being able to choose "Wolverine yellow/blue" or "Wolverine brown") and a player has to go to some effort to make a ripoff character - in most cases, it would be far easier to make an original design. Further, they specify in the terms of service that ripoff characters are not permitted, and when they are reported/caught they are forced to change names and/or costumes.

      I don't know if Marvel is trying to shut CoH down or cripple it (like by making NCSoft remove particular costume traits so that customers can no longer make costumes that look like Marvel heroes). It seems to me that if Cryptic and company are making a good faith effort to police the ripoffs, that SHOULD be enough to get them off the hook. Of course, nobody ever said the law always made sense.

    3. Re:A new low. by Mysticalfruit · · Score: 3, Funny

      Super Hero: Um, I want a costume with a cape...

      Costume Creator: NO CAPES!

      --
      Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
    4. Re:A new low. by Tyreth · · Score: 4, Funny

      Quick! Ban colour pencils so that people cannot make duplicate drawings of Marvel heroes! It is rumored that pencils can be used to "design characters that are virtual copies of its own superheros".

  2. Oh noes! by Oncogene · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is akin to suing Bic because it allows users to draw pictures extremely similar to Hulk or Wolverine.

    --

    - - - - - - -
    "All hail the glory of the Hypnotoad."
    1. Re:Oh noes! by dykofone · · Score: 3, Informative
      I was looking for a way to give Marvel some credit here, being that I've never seen the CoH character creation interface. Maybe there's presets that look all too close to Marvel characters? Certain outfits that are almost identical? I'd be like Bic making a stamp in the shape of Hulk or Wolverine: while you're still putting it on paper, Bic made it that much easier for you to recreate Marvel's IP.

      And then I read this:

      The New York-based company also took issue with the ability of players to go so far as to name their superhero creations after Marvel comic book characters.

      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? Should CoH keep a database of every trademarked name and lock them out as character names? "Sorry, you can't be Kroger, that name is already taken."

    2. Re:Oh noes! by Walkiry · · Score: 4, Interesting

      >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.

      --
      ---- Take the Space Quiz!
    3. Re:Oh noes! by Kierthos · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well, the Terms of Service specifically forbid using any name for a character that is trademarked, copyrighted, etc. by a third party, with loss of your account as a penalty for doing so anyway.

      Mind you, when I first started playing, there were a lot of comic-book clones, but they are extremely rarer now because most players, it seems, would rather make something that is uniquely theirs rather then be the 18th or 63rd Tick rip-off.

      Kierthos

      --
      Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
  3. In a parallel universe by dtfinch · · Score: 3, Funny

    Disney sues Macromedia for failing to prevent customers from using their software to infringe upon Disney's Intellectual Property.

  4. PUT DOWN THAT PENCIL!!! by maskedbishounen · · Score: 5, Funny

    You're violating our IP rights.

    Thanks,
    You friends from Marvel

    Honestly, though. Companies are taking IP far too seriously these days. Calm down, get over it. If anything, it shows whatever you're doing is working, because it's popular! Don't trash it by being a jerk.

    --
    "An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program."
  5. Marvel - 100% original copies by Japong · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ah yes, the Hulk - because BIG GREEN GUY with TORN PANTS is such a hugely original concept and - what's that Mr. Hyde? I wouldn't like you when you're...mad... no... wait NOOOOO!

    1. Re:Marvel - 100% original copies by Zardoz44 · · Score: 3, Funny
      Myers: Okay, maybe my dad did steal Itchy, but so what? Animation is built on plagiarism!
      [lawyer slaps his forehead]
      If it weren't for someone plagiarizing the Honeymooners, we wouldn't have the Flintstones. If someone hadn't ripped off Sgt. Bilko, they'd be no Top Cat. Huckleberry Hound, Chief Wiggum, Yogi Bear? Hah! Andy Griffith, Edward G. Robinson, Art Carney.

      Myers: Your honor, you take away our right to steal ideas, where are they gonna come from? Her?
      [points at Marge]

      Marge: Uh... Hmm... How about... Ghostmutt?

      From The Day the Violence died

  6. Take a page from the RIAA by davidwr · · Score: 3, Funny

    They should sue the end-users.

    Then go bankrupt from the bad publicity.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
  7. Die already, Marvel by Kierthos · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The thing is, I wouldn't play a Marvel Comics based MMORPG even if they did have one out (which they don't, and I seriously doubt we'd see one before 2006).

    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

    --
    Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
  8. This isn't about just the tool by thenerdgod · · Score: 3, Informative
    Back when we were all creating our characters for our Communist supergroup, we had a bit of a back-and-forth with Cryptic over who, exactly, owned our ideas, especially if the characters we used were ideas we wanted to turn into a comic, or based on existing ideas we had used in a comic.


    It came down to the EULA which states that your character and all derivations or representations thereof are property of Cryptic and NCSoft. To which I asked pointedly "What about the Fantastic Four?"

    This was going to bite them in the ass eventually, as they allege to own everything you create, even if it's not yours to create.

    My suspicion, as I've voiced elsewhere, is that they will be required to remove these characters from the game, and pay damages to Marvel, and probably DC and whoever else, in the end.

    Then, of course, there's the obvious ownership issue of this guy.

  9. The elite may freely violate copyright? by cfalcon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Your argument is equivalent to saying that it's ok if the elite (in this case, those skilled in drawing) violate copyright, but to make that available to everyone is wrong.

    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.

  10. My plans are ruined by OldManAndTheC++ · · Score: 3, Funny

    Had a great looking character, big, with green skin and torn clothes. I was going to call him "The Incredible Bulk". Now I'll have to make him smaller, put him in a business suit, and call him "Marvel Blows Chunks Man". His super power is his magic briefcase, from which he can throw thousands of pleadings and C&D letters, completely papering over his opponent. Fear him!

    --
    Soylent Green is peoplicious!
  11. meanwhile... by flyingsquid · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...having thwarted efforts to create new superheroes who might stop him, LawyerMan's sinister plan for world domination draws one step closer to fruition!