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Settlement in Marvel vs. NCSoft Lawsuit
GrnArmadillo writes "The official City of Heroes site is reporting that Marvel's lawsuit over the CoH character generator has been settled. It looks like CoH essentially won, though it's unclear what price, if any, they're paying for the victory. The key portion of the brief press release: 'The parties' settlement allows them all to continue to develop and sell exciting and innovative products, but does not reduce the players' ability to express their creativity in making and playing original and exciting characters ... While the terms of the settlement were not disclosed, all parties agree that this case was never about monetary issues and that the fans of their respective products and characters are the winners in this settlement.'" Commentary is available on Gamespot. Glad this is over. This has been pending almost as long as I've worked here.
Are you sure you work here?
Sorry, sorry...
Now that this is out of the way, how long before we get City of Asia, complete with tentacle monsters, transforming magical girls, rubber suited lizards, and jumpsuited sentai heros? ... not that I'm interested in playing as a tentacle monster. Really.
Hey, I'm happy I can still design my characters to my heart's content, but part of me really wishes that there were no settlement. Part of me wishes that they had fought it out in court.
Why? Because I'm pretty durn confident that NCsoft would have won, and it would have put an end to this silliness once and for all. As it stands, now we can look forward to other companies suing over this same thing. The person being sued will see this and think, "Geez, NCsoft settled their case, I'd better settle, too," and the company suing gets rewarded with "undisclosed terms" for their bogus lawsuit.
I also think there's something fundamentally wrong with the terms of the settlement being undisclosed publically. I'd like to know if the terms were something along the lines of, "[NCsoft:] You drop your lawsuit and pay our legal expenses, and we agree not to countersue you or make you look like an idiot in our press release." Given Marvel's semi-defeat earlier this year, I can't imagine that either Marvel's or NCsoft's lawyers would think that Marvel might actually win. If a lawsuit is filed in a public court of law and my tax dollars have to pay for judges and other public servants to process these cases until they're settled, I think the final outcome should be public! Cough it up, NCsoft, what did you agree to other than not changing the costume editor?
(sigh...) Well, I think it's interesting that Marvel is coming out with their own MMORPG for the Xbox 360. I wonder who's in line to sue them even as I write this? I don't know about you, but I'm going to have a really hard time feeling sorry for them.
Are you retarded?
Sure... Except that Cryptic Studios and NCSoft both at least have offices stateside. The race card rarely flies in todays world.
I'll agree that Marvel thought they had a case, and that (despite what they say) it's all about the money. But I don't think it was racism. There's no need to get more basic than greed to find a cause for the case here.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
the fans of their respective products and characters are the winners in this settlement
Amazingly enough, that's probably actually true for once. Hooray for the consumer.
Although I'm sure the lawyers got their pound of flesh, too.
What fucking morons modded this statement of crap up to +2? This was about greed, pure and simple. Wow are you stupid; OP and the up-modders.
Thank you for being the voice of reason
First of all, Cryptic is an American company, based in Texas. I don't know the exact details of how NCSoft got involved, but they acquired the company only after Cryptic had begun developing the game. For all intents and purposes its an American game. Secondly, how is this racism? I think what Marvel did is complete and utter nonsense. I think Marvel is full of crap. But it's simply competition. This is no different than what happens in South Korea, Japan or anywhere else. In fact, over there they really do go out of their way to ensure domestic companies have a significant advantage over foreign companies. Will you call it racism then, or does the bias only apply to American companies?
Fact check please. A: Cryptic Studios is the developer of City of Heroes and was the direct target of the lawsuit.
B: Cryptic is based in Los Gatos, California
B: NCSoft is NOT an American company. Their headquarters is Seoul, South Korea. NCSoft Austin is the North American branch. NCSoft Austin is based in Austin, Texas.
C: NCSoft does not own Cryptic. NCSoft is the publisher for City of Heroes/Villains.
D: It is not simply competition. Litigating another company simply because you have a bigger wallet and can drag a court proceding out long enough to bankrupt a competetor is a hostile business tactic and is/used to be illegal.
"Don't feel bad for me child; I'm the monster that hides under your bed."
This is good news. When I spoke with the Jack Emmert in February, he told me of several features and completed code that they coulnd't release because of "another company having to do with comicbooks, and a court". 8)
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
I don't think Marvel is totally off base. They just didn't sue NCSoft for the right reason. Instead of going after them for allowing you to create Marvel Characters, they should've gone after NCSoft for copying their rules established in 1984 to the early 1990s by TSR's Marvel Role Playing game. If you go to this website, http://www.classicmarvel.com/ , you will see that character creation and powers are 98% identical to what NCSoft uses in City of Heroes. NCSoft basically took the rules established by TSR and made a videogame out of it. But that's not what Marvel sued about, so of course they lost.
Please don't put down retarded people in that way. This guy is "easily offended," which is much worse than retarded.
You still can't dress up as spiderman or the hulk. What it does do is stop Marvel getting stroppy if a player does do this.
Anyway Marvel was screwed if they got away with it as NCSoft own the rights to all Heros/costumes in thier game that any player makes which means they could sue Marvel if they infringed on any of thier characters.