Great Western Dragon writes “In a stunning display of “we should have seen this coming,” Marvel Comics sued the companies behind the extremely popular massively multiplayer online game, City of Heroes. Their beef? City of Heroes allows you to create your own superhero and this superhero can look like certain Marvel comics characters. Indeed you can have a blonde guy in red, white and blue tights with a star on his chest (Captain America) or a huge green muscular giant (Hulk).
Of course, many believe the case is lamer than Tiny Tim. Using the same logic, Marvel should next sue pencil and paper manufacturers for royalties since an artist could also use those mediums to infringe upon a trademark.
More over at Wired.”
Marvel & DC
The thing I find most amusing about this is how Marvel kind of sets itself up for this kind of thing. DC Comics really isn’t too up in arms about the whole thing, but if you think about it, DC has a far different approach to their heroes than Marvel.
See almost every single DC comic hero has a very recognizable, and thus trademarkable, symbol or insignia about them. Certainly all the big moneymakers do. Batman has the bat logo, Superman has the big S, Green Lantern has a green lantern, Flash has his lightning bolt, and Wonder Woman has the tiara and golden W symbols across her chest. Hell, even Robin (aka Decoy) has a big R. Those symbols are immediately recognizable, understood, and stand for a character. You will find none of them in City of Heroes. About the cloest you’ll come is you can indeed put a red S on someone’s chest. But that’s all it is, a capital S. It looks nothing like the Superman shield. (You can also put any other letter of the alphabet on a character’s chest along with the numbers 0-9 and, yes, even a few punctuation marks here and there.)
When it comes to Marvel, fewer characters have that recognizable logo to them. Spider-man has the spider, Daredevil has the double D, and Fantastic Four has the number 4. But these are all classic characters. Beast? No emblem. Wolverine? No emblem. Dr. Doom? No emblem. Even the X-men, which do have an X emblem, really doesn’t count because they ALL wear that emblem; kinda like a name tag.
So really, all Marvel has going for them when it comes to character recognition is the overall appearence. And that’s it. So will I get in trouble if I wear a pinkish/purpleish shirt with high boots and a brown trenchcoat? All because I look like Gambit? If my friend in a wheelchair shaves his head and wears a business suit, will he get sued for looking like Professor X? The mind boggles.
Marvel lawsuits
I wonder if marvel is going to sue me because I like using an ironman skin for one of my people in the Sims.