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.

Comments

Is this really a victory?

[KingSkippus]

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.

Re:Is this really a victory?

[Kelson]

Eh, there's plenty of Superman and Batman clones around. Marvel's got the the Squadron Supreme, a JLA clone invented in the 1970s for an unofficial JLA/Avengers crossover (the same year, DC created an Avengers clone to meet the JLA). Hyperion and Nighthwak are the Superman and Batman characters. Image introduced Supreme (no connection) in the 1990s, a Superman-like character who accumulated many elements of Superman's mythos that DC discarded in the mid-1980s. The Authority's Apollo and Midnighter are very much like Superman and Batman (except for being a couple). Big Bang Comics is all about taking classic comics characters and trying to duplicate the feel of the 1950s stories -- their Superman/Batman clones are Ultiman and the Knight Watchman.

And so on.

Of course, lawsuits over clones go back decades. Consider the twisted case of Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel. He was introduced just two years after Superman, and by 1941 DC Comics had filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against them. It took years, but Fawcett lost and ended up cancelling all their superhero books. Oddly, DC ended up buying Captain Marvel from them, but the trademark lapsed, and Marvel Comics introduced their own Captain Marvel, leading to another legal battle... which is why both DC and Marvel now have characters named Captain Marvel, but DC has to use the name Shazam on the covers.