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Setback for Marvel in NCSoft Lawsuit
DeeFresh writes "An article on Gamesindustry.biz is reporting that Judge R. Gary Klausner dismissed many of the Marvel's claims against NCSoft. From the article: 'Judge Klausner also agreed with the defendants that some of Marvel's allegations and exhibits should be stricken as 'false and sham' because they were not actually created by users of the game but by Marvel itself.'" Commentary also available on Gamespot.com.
You mean like Quicksilver?
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
I can help here.
Body size -- As of the Issue #4 patch going in soon, you can re-scale torso, chest, shoulders, nose, eyes, head, etc, etc. It's a full control over body shape. You start with three bases, male, female and "huge"... but there are hundreds of "huge" style super heroes, not just hulk, so nothing innately about that screams Hulk.
Textures -- You can't give them specifically ripped purple shorts. There are no ripped shorts. You can give them some sort of purple pants or tights, but not the specific style. You can give them green skin. And since Hulk only has two identifying traits, green skin and purple shorts, that means you can KINDA make something similar -- in the same way you could with two crayons.
Powers -- The only power set that's close to a blatant ripoff is the claws. But the claws don't "emerge" from your flesh like Wolverine's, they're bolted to a metal object on the back of your hand. The animations are similar to Wolvy's, though, that's iffy. But the Regeneration power has a lot of green glows and auras Wolverine does not have. You can't make a costume that's perfectly matching Wolverine's, just a horribly cheap knockoff that, if you didn't have your glasses on, could be mistaken for him.
Basically, the only thing in the game that is really questionable are the claws and claw animations. If Cryptic reanimates those, then they're golden. None of the other power sets or costume pieces directly duplicates a known hero -- at least not a hero with unique powers. PLENTY of heroes have laser eyes, or shoot power from their hands, or burn things. You can't copyright that.