Slashdot Mirror
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.
who do we like again? we like comic books and we like mmorpgs... so who is supposed to win this?
thanks i have a headache now.
Marvel's hypocrisy never ceases to astound me. If they had actually created all their characters rather than simply copying the ideas of others (who had often copied them from others still), then maybe they'd have a case. As it stands, Marvel wouldn't exist if they hadn't done things a whole lot "worse" than what they're suing NCSoft for.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
It would have been so perfect if the ruling had been "Worst lawsuit - evar!"
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Is it just me or does this sound like Marvel is trying to claim ownership of super-heros as a concept? How is creating my character on-line to look like the Hulk any different than making my own Hulk halloween costume and wearing it out in public? I'm not claiming to be officially representing Marvel in any way, and you'd have to be a pretty big idiot to think I was.
I play Call of Duty as "Dr. Johnny Fever" could the creators of WKRP have a case against me or the game developers? I call Shenanigans!
No battles to the death are recalled. Mumpsman can hit to attack and cause brainsmashing.
Now, how do we get this judge to preside over the ongoing debate of fair use in the digital world? Judge Klausner seems to actually "get it" that just because a product exists, it isn't going to immediately be used to steal or infringe upon copyrights.
I have a feeling that the judgement in this case is actually bigger than we realize right now.
http://www.tomandemily.com
Gazerbeam? Total rip-off of Cyclops (Marvel again).
The point is, in most cases, the super-hero genre is a string of characters with similar abilities all with slightly different names or secondary powers. There's going to be a lot of overlap. Marvel would have to prove that NCSoft set out to promote said infringement. That's not the case. NCSoft is more like Xerox (or, say, a beat-up old Canon multifuction ink jet printer/copier/fax): you can make "infringing" copies, but (a) that's not the intent and (b) the copies all kinda suck anyway.
Do not touch -Willie
Now that Marvel's silly claims are falling flat in court, it might be a good time for them to team up with NCSoft and give their fans what they want. Why not go ahead and license the characters to NCSoft in a special expansion pack with a premium monthly surcharge? Fans who want to play as or against Marvel characters get what they want, and Marvel and NCSoft get some extra cash. This seems to make so much more sense than duking it out in court.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
If legislation like this is actually passed, will kids be sued for homemade costumes? If you send your son treak-or-treeting in a homemade Spiderman costume because you couldn't afford an officially endorsed one, will you be fined? Will every 5 year-old boy who dreams of flying and runs around his backyard be sued for copyright infringement?
They did make some great comics. But this isn't really about the quality of their stories. This is about the characters, and in a way, not even that, but just about the look and feel of the characters. How many of Marvel's characters were ripped off of other existing characters? A lot. Now they made up new stories and such for them in most cases, but it's obvious where the ideas came from. There's a couple articles I've seen that even go through and list a lot of the comparisons between Marvel characters and the characters they were based on. Now they're suing NCSoft for even less than that. Just for the fact that players of the game can create characters that look like Marvel characters and have similar powers. How wrong is that? I stand by my post.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
"He further dismissed Marvel's claim for a judicial declaration that defendants are not an online service provider under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which offers a degree of protection in such cases."
I never even would have thought of using that as a defense, although in retrospect I guess it makes a degree of sense.
This is the same protection afforded to ISPs that make them not liable for transfer of copyrighted materials over their connections.
The difference to me is that NCsoft is providing the tool (software) which is allegedly being used to create the infringing works whereas an ISP is merely the transport mechanism that could be used for illegal copyrighted works.
The comparison to the VCR case is very interesting as well. The VCR can also be used as a transport mechanism for duplication of illegal copyrighted works, but it is not a tool that can create materials that violate copyrights.
Go NCsoft! Throw Marvel out of the courtroom!
And for everyone who says that Marvel MUST file this lawsuit or risk losing rights to its intellectual property - if so how come we haven't seen identical suits filed by DC Comics and other superhero creators?
Sometimes my arms bend back.
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.